698. The Troubles: The Brink of Civil War (Part 2)

19:43Dominic Sandbrook:And so they say the next march should be somewhere much more high profile, namely the city of Derry or officially London Derry. So this, as we said last time, Northern Ireland's second city, 60-40 Catholic Protestant. Economically, Derry is really struggling. One in five men are out of work. The mood is very bleak, is very fractious. It is the worst possible place to hold a demonstration.

20:10Tom Holland:And not just because it's poor, but because it has such a symbolic resonance for the Protestants.

20:16Dominic Sandbrook:Symbolic for both sides. Symbolic for the Catholics because it's a Catholic majority city run by Protestants. Symbolic for the Protestants because there was this siege in 1689, and they hold the Apprentice Boys of Derry March every year to remember it.

20:32Tom Holland:But if their goal is to get a kind of violent reaction, then they need to annoy Protestants, don't they? Yeah, and this is the place. You know, they want kind of the equivalent of the bull-necked sheriff going in. Bull Connor. Yeah, all that kind of thing, and smacking up civil rights protesters in America. If they want the same thing, then they have to kind of press Protestant neuralgia areas.

20:57Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, totally. Totally. And this is what they're doing. Their plan is they will start on the east side of the city across the River Foil. They will cross the Craigavon Bridge. They'll go into the city centre. They will go through Protestant areas. They will end inside the city walls, which are, of course, sacred really to Protestants, where the Apprentice Boys of Derry have their parade. And they will end near the War Memorial in the centre of Derry, again, a sacred spot for Protestants. Now, as the Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan, not everybody's cup of tea, quite nationalist history, but as he rightly says in his book, The Troubles, he says, it was as though Hamas were to parade through Jerusalem's holy places and conclude with a rally at the Wailing Wall.

21:42Dominic Sandbrook:Well, when you put it like that, it's not quite as bad as that, but it's very provocative. And at Stormont, the hardline Home Affairs Minister William Craig, who's always keen to bolster his popularity, with the sort of more extreme unionists. He does the obvious thing. He bans the march, as he's empowered to do. But on the 5th of October 1968, about 400 people, including Austin Curry and Gerry Fitt and some, I think there's three British Labour MPs, they turn up at the appointed spot on Duke Street anyway. And when they turn up, they find the street is blocked at both ends by lines of IUC policemen who have been ordered to clear the road by force.

22:26Dominic Sandbrook:Now, if you read some accounts, they will say that the Derry IRA had had a meeting beforehand. They had planned for this, and they had said when it kicks off, make sure those MPs are in the front line so they get hit, because that will give us the publicity that we want. Well, this is exactly what happens. The RUC, you know, they play the part appointed for them as the bull-necked kind of American sheriff. They pile into the marchers. Some of the marchers manage to get to the bridge, but there they are driven back by a water cannon into a kind of hail of baton blows. 80 or so people are taken to hospital with injuries, and one of them is Jerry Fitt, remember, a Westminster MP, who is beaten, he's dragged away, put in a police van, and taken to the police station.

23:16Dominic Sandbrook:At the police station, the police say to him, clean yourself up, and he refuses. is, I wanted the outside world to see the blood flowing strongly down my face. And what is really toxic for Northern Ireland's image is that an Irish TV crew, an RTE crew, had filmed the whole thing. So the footage of the RUC officers absolutely leathering fit in the others with their batons and their sticks goes around the world. If you kind of Google it, you can see photos of it. I mean, that is what they wanted, isn't it? I mean, it couldn't be better for them. You're right, from their perspective, it couldn't be better.

23:52Dominic Sandbrook:But I think if you were to pick one moment, well, there are lots of different moments. But this is a contender for one of the moments where the sort of spiral into disaster becomes inevitable, because it's followed by days of rioting in Derry in the working class bogside area, very heavily Catholic. There are young men throwing stones and petrol bombs at the police, and then there are kind of copycat riots across Northern Ireland. And watching all this from Belfast, Terence O 'Neill knows that he has to do something. And five days afterwards, he says to his cabinet, he meets his cabinet, he says, I'm going to go to London, I'm going to see Harold Wilson, and I know that Harold Wilson is going to ask me for some pretty big changes.

24:32Dominic Sandbrook:And O 'Neill, I mean, I have to admit, I think O 'Neill is hapless, but I feel really sorry for him, because I think his instincts are often, you know, admirable. He says to his colleagues, look, we know how this works. whenever there's trouble and i quote the first reaction of our own people is to retreat into old hardline attitudes he says come on let's be honest can any of us truthfully say in the confines of this room that the minority has no grievance calling for remedy he says we cannot govern by police power alone it will be a very hard job to sell concessions to our people but in this critical moment may this not be our duty i mean i think now you read that and you think fair enough but not all of his ministers agree with him so i already mentioned the hardline home affairs minister william craig william craig says to him hold on you can't go over to london and meet harold wilson and sell out and let him and make you introduce reforms because if you do that you will and i quote provoke a massive uprising in the loyalist community when this is the dilemma for terence o 'neill basically the obvious thing might seem to be to make concessions to the catholics but if you do that you're in danger of losing your base now a very skillful politician might be able to do that whether he is that man we will find out he flies off to london fourth of november to meet wilson and his home secretary friend of the show jim callahan now just for people who haven't listened to our series about britain in the 70s harold wilson enthusiast for scouting tight shorts isn't he very tight shorts on holiday in the city islands loves modernization the white eto technology giving the beatles mbe's correct exactly economic growth he came to power people thought he might be quite left-wing he became more and more centrist as time went on he had become prime minister in 1964 some labor back benches as we said last time were already complaining a lot about discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland.

26:33Dominic Sandbrook:But most people in the Labour Party don't really care that much. Howard Wilson certainly doesn't care. He's much more interested in the economy, in the trade unions, in Rhodesia, even in Vietnam. When you read the diaries of his ministers like Tony Benn, Barbara Castle, Richard Crossman, they basically never talk about Northern Ireland at all. It's not the top of their list.

26:52Tom Holland:I think what listeners will want to know is, is Marcia on the scene at this point? His domineering secretary who, in the mid-70s, people are plotting to kill.

27:00Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, there's no plots to kill Marcia at this point. Marcia and Harold, if they had their affair, they've had it. Remember, they slept together a number of times, but it was not satisfactory.

27:10Tom Holland:Found it disappointing, yeah.

27:12Dominic Sandbrook:So she's lurking, but it hasn't all completely gone mad at this point. It's quite understated. His home secretary is Jim Callaghan, friend of the show, Portsmouth, the Royal Navy, very puritanical, big man, bit of a bully, great Sandbrookian hero. He's been Home Secretary since the end of 1967. As we said before, he has an Irish background, hence the name Callaghan. His grandfather had moved to England during the famine, but Callaghan basically has very little knowledge or interest of Northern Ireland. He wrote a book about it or had a book ghostwritten for him in the early 1970s about it. I can't remember what it was called, The Problem of Ulster or something like that.

27:50Dominic Sandbrook:And he said that when he arrived at the Home Office, they gave him a huge sort of briefing document. there was lots of stuff about prisons race relations the fire service the police and there was nothing in this document about northern ireland at all there isn't at this point a secretary of state for northern ireland no no no we don't need one because it's being run from belfast however wilson and callaghan are interested now because there's a lot of fighting you know there's been this this business in uh derry they can see there's a problem but at the end of 1968 they've got a problem. They want Terence O 'Neill to fix it.

28:23Dominic Sandbrook:And they're quite hard on him, actually. For people who listen to previous series who think they're sort of all a bit limp, not at all. Howard Wilson said to him, look, you need our money. You can't survive without British money. If you don't start introducing reforms, we'll cut off your money. Callaghan, we have had enough of you stringing us along. He says, we've got a list of changes. We want to see them right away. And O 'Neill said to them, look, I'm going as far as I can. I'm getting death threats from loyalists you know don't push this i can't if you push us too far there'll be a loyalist uprising or whatever anyway he goes back to belfast and he says to his colleagues they were very tough i've got to give them something and so he unveils this very limited reform package so limited sort of reformers who gets the vote there's a new system for allocating housing some police reformers all of this and it is your classic case of if you had offered this in 1963 it would have been a different story but now it's 1968 and you please nobody at all the civil rights activists say come on this like you've got to dismantle the whole discriminatory system you can't just give us this but on the other side some of O 'Neill's own ministers say god you're a total wuss and an appeaser you go over to London you let them push you around tell us what to do in our own country it's this guy William Craig it says well Paisley was obviously right about you you know you're just a weakling you don't stand up for ulster you're just too interested in pleasing the english you

29:51Tom Holland:know you're basically an englishman anyway with your eaten background i mean just to remind people this is a guy who'd fought in the second world war and taken out tank platoons i imagine most

29:59Dominic Sandbrook:people in this story have some sort of war i mean it's always the way with 60s 70s uk history isn't it except for jerry adams yes yes well aaron pace didn't fight in the war no no doubt made warlike speeches but i don't think he um took out a german machine gun nest or anything like that It's the shabby men in London, isn't it, who did that? Men with glasses, yeah, who become incredibly ineffectual ministers of transport or something. Anyway, so this is the context for O 'Neill to give that speech that you read at the beginning. This speech where he basically says to people, look, come on, this is where we are.

30:32Dominic Sandbrook:Peace on one side, total disaster on the other. If you read the text, it's a very sincere appeal by a man who's clearly exhausted in the end of his tether. he says to the civil rights activists you know sure i'm not going to completely satisfy you but this is a democracy i ask you now with all sincerity to call your people off the streets you're ulsterm and yourselves you know we are all of a stubborn people who will not be pushed too far and then of his critics the hardline loyalist critics he says they're not merely extremists they are lunatics who would set a course along a road which would only lead to an all-island Republic.

31:08Dominic Sandbrook:They're not loyalists, but disloyalists. Disloyal to Britain, disloyal to the Constitution, disloyal to the Crown. I mean, it's quite strong stuff. It's punchy, isn't it? It's punchy. And at first, it seems it might do the trick. Actually, the civil rights campaigners do listen to him. They say, fine, we will suspend our demonstrations for a month as an act of goodwill. And the Belfast Telegraph newspaper organises a petition. I'm backing O 'Neill and they get 150 ,000 signatures which is a tenth of the population but deep down I think even O 'Neill knows that he's actually left this too late so Christmas Eve he wrote a note to his private secretary he said 1968 has been a terrible year but 1969 is going to be even worse as I look in the glass darkly I see demonstrations counter demonstrations meetings, rows and general misery.

32:00Dominic Sandbrook:And really telling is that at this point, O 'Neill says to his secretary, the only real solution for this is basically for London to shut us down and impose direct rule from Westminster. But they will never do it. They don't have the courage to do it. And so we will drift from crisis to crisis. Just 10 days after that, the hopes for a sort of peaceful resolution take another big hit. So we talked about the radicalism in 1968. On New Year's Day in 1969, a radical kind of socialist Republican group began a civil rights march from Belfast to Derry. And this was a group that called themselves People's Democracy.

32:38Dominic Sandbrook:And they'd been founded at Queen's University, Belfast. And their best known member was a young woman called Bernadette Devlin, who was 21 years old. She was a Catholic student, psychology, I think. And the People's Democracy members had been watching Paris and Prague and the American civil rights marches, and they really did want to provoke violent reprisals, because they said this is the only way to expose the true nature of the state we're living in. So Bernadette Devlin, what we really wanted to do was to pull the carpet off the floor to show the dirt that was under it. And O 'Neill begged them not to go ahead and do this march.

33:18Dominic Sandbrook:other civil rights activists asked not to go on the march they go on the march and by the 4th of january they have reached a place called burn tollett bridge which is six miles east of derry and here 400 loyalists are waiting for them armed with sticks and stones and iron bars and cudgels studded with nails and many of these people waiting in ambush are off-duty b specials and they absolutely lay into the student marchers beating the living daylights out of them and meanwhile members of the police the ruc are standing there watching and doing absolutely nothing and it's covered on tv and it's basically just what bernadette devlin and the other marchers had expected in a way what they wanted and this is i think is a really good example the point that we were talking about earlier.

34:14Dominic Sandbrook:People often talk about the troubles as though they sort of arise organically, by accident or by magic. Actually, this is a really good example of how they are willed into being by people who could have made different choices. Because as we said, lots of other civil rights campaigners had said, please don't go on this march, you'll only make things worse. They thought that by marching through, I mean, the People's Democracy March goes through the small Protestant towns of County Antrim. and they said don't do this it is needlessly provocative but bernadette deflin and co their attitude was well we're suffering terrible discrimination we want to provoke people we want the reaction we want the publicity and of course on the other side the loyalists didn't have to turn up with their kind of cudgels and nails i mean they could have just let them do it

35:02Tom Holland:they could have just let them march it just their strategy seems mad i mean it's like the nationalists have said here's an elephant trap oh brilliant let's jump into it it's just lunatic behavior from them they would say we're defending our society our state from people who want to destroy it i mean i know what they say but they have failed to understand how it will play on the screens of the world i mean i suppose they would say they don't care i suppose they would say they

35:26Dominic Sandbrook:don't care but i agree with you that so they haven't been watching tv because when martin of thinking did his marches in america the ones that worked best were the ones where the forces of authority or white racists or whatever showed the ugly side to their society and if you don't do that then it's much harder to cut through with the public to cast yourself as the victim of course so i think everybody involved in that burnt toilet bridge story you know they got what they wanted and the per and the person who loses most is of course the one person who's trying to hold the whole thing together which is terence o 'neill because this is terrible for him because first of all catholics say for these tv pictures of people being beaten once again shows the state will not protect us the ruc will not protect us the b specials are not the solution they are the problem they are violent bigoted sectarian they cannot be reformed all this on the other hand the loyalists and unionists say well burnt olip bridge shows that the civil rights activists they're only interested in provoking disorder they want to they deliberately sought to provoke chaos because they want to undermine our state and terence o 'neill has given them far too much he makes concessions but it's never enough for them somebody one day will have to stand up to these people this is what both sides say and this leads o 'neill in a really really tricky position and what he decides to do he says basically sod it i'm going to gamble everything and on the 3rd of february he decides to throw the dice he says i'm going to dissolve the parliament in stormont i only call a general election and i'm going to say to the people of northern ireland what do you want do you want peace or do you want civil war back me or sack me i mean he's taking a risk and at the point that he's doing that in london harold wilson's government at last finally wake up to how serious this is and they say god we're going to have to think about a doomsday scenario here so just six days afterwards callaghan tells one of his cabinet colleagues richard crossman who writes a diary he says we have been drawing up a contingency plan if things go wrong for terence o 'neill in this election we may have to send british troops into the streets of northern ireland and to take over the government ourselves so as the people of northern ireland prepare to go to the polls the stakes could not be higher not least for o 'neill himself because in his own constituency in bandside in antrim where for election after election he has been unopposed he now faces a challenge from a unionist hardliner a rival unionist and dominic who is this unionist hardliner surprise surprise it is the reverend ian paisley unbelievable okay

38:15Tom Holland:we'll come back after the break to find out what happens in this titanic clash

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39:40Dominic Sandbrook:This is a paid advertisement by BetterHelp. Understanding routine has always given us an insight into the past. It's a window into human nature and historical structures.

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40:35Dominic Sandbrook:That's betterhelp.com slash restishistory. Hola, camaradas. It's Dominic here. Sorry to interrupt the episode, but I just thought you'd like to know that we've been thinking about something that you've been writing to us a lot. One of the most requested subjects ever since we started the rest is history, which is the Spanish Civil War. Now, I can tell you exclusively that plans are afoot for us to do the Spanish Civil War at some point, hopefully next year in 2027. But as a little taster or teaser, on our sister show, The Book Club, my co-presenter Tabby and I have just released an episode on perhaps the emblematic novel of the Spanish Civil War, which is Ernest Hemingway's book, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

41:28Dominic Sandbrook:so in this episode we do dig into the history we talk about the clash between fascism and idealism we talk about the roots of the conflict and of course the way in which it drew in so many foreign intellectuals and artists and writers Hemingway of course among them and many of you will know that Hemingway was in Spain during the war he was a correspondent in Madrid which was under siege by Franco's forces and he draws on that experience in For Whom the Bell Tolls to tell the story of an American volunteer who's part of a guerrilla unit who are fighting Franco's troops. So if you keep listening at the end of this episode, we will have an exclusive short clip which discusses the history of the Spanish Civil War.

42:13Tom Holland:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History, where it is the evening of the 24th of February 1969, and the polls have closed in the elections for a northern irish parliament at stormont and the mood is incredibly tense isn't it because for the last few weeks the reverend ian paisley has been tramping the streets with bands and drummers and holding up bibles and he's been denouncing the traitor who will soon be crushed

42:46Dominic Sandbrook:beneath the marching feet of the protestants the stakes are high so in band side terence o 'neill supporters are watching very anxiously as the pile of Ian Paisley's votes is kind of getting higher and higher and higher and eventually the result comes through and Terence O 'Neill has just scraped home he's won a majority of just 1 ,400 votes over Paisley and this for somebody who had always been unopposed before is a real shock but actually this is the only good news that he gets of the night because when you look at the rest of the results they're very confused he hasn't got the mandate that he wanted in working-class protestant areas moderate unionism has hemorrhaged support the hardliners have done very well and his party although the unionists are still in control of stormont of course their party is now very deeply fractured and after this it's the classic story you know a prime minister calls a snap election to try and shore up their authority they don't get the mandate they wanted and after that they're basically a dead man walking and the end for o 'neill comes a few weeks later and it comes in very dramatic circumstances on the evening of the 30th of march 1969 he's waiting for a vote of confidence from the ulster unionist council when a bomb goes off at the castle ray electricity substation and that plunges half of belfast into darkness and in the next few weeks there are more bombs at water installations and water pipelines and electricity stations and so by the 26th of march much of belfast is without water.

44:16Dominic Sandbrook:There are actually trucks crawling through the streets, giving water to people who can't get to standpipes. Now in his Protestant Telegraph, Ian Paisley says this is the handiwork of the IRA. Loyalists must now appreciate the struggle that lies ahead and the supreme sacrifice that will have to be made in order that Ulster will remain Protestant. But do you know what the irony of this these bombs weren't planted by the ira they were planted by the ulster volunteer force working alongside ian paisley's own ulster protestant volunteers which paisley presumably knew about he must have known about it surely so he was lying i guess yeah yeah he was i mean that's poor from a man of the cloth remember the bloke we met last time who runs the uvf gusty spence oh the guy who shot everyone in pubs yeah he's in prison at this point because he's been because of his pub shooting record although he actually denied that he'd pull the trigger he's in prison and he says quite openly afterwards he says we did this to expose o 'neill's weakness to show people that he would be he would be soft on the ira if the ira were to blow things up it was carefully planned to bring down o 'neill to quote him directly and it works because two days after the peak of the water business o 'neill resigns as prime minister he's absolutely exhausted he's totally demoralized he can't see any future um to a prosperous future for northern ireland and when he goes on tv to explain this he's completely candid he says the old fears the old prejudices the old loyalties were too much for me and i couldn't overcome them i suppose the problem for

45:53Tom Holland:him was that he he seemed too too kind of posh too landed too grand um and so i imagine that the obvious strategy for um his party is to elect as his replacement someone with roots in the local community someone who you know the average guy in the pub on the shankhill road could identify with

46:15Dominic Sandbrook:so is that what they do no they basically choose the same person again i mean this is a bit harsh because there are differences but the person they choose is yet another member of the landed gentry and he's James Chichester Clark. He's a landowner from County Londonderry. So Terence O 'Neill, you may remember, went to Eton. James Chichester Clark went to Eton. So he's another Old Etonian. Yeah, he joined the Irish Guards. I think actually Terence O 'Neill did as well. He rose to a major. He was at Anzio.

46:47Tom Holland:Oh, so better than O 'Neill.

46:49Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, exactly. He was wounded at Anzio and he was left with injuries that plagued him all his life. he is more hardline than O 'Neill he'd actually resigned because he didn't agree with the way they were bringing in one put one man one vote but O 'Neill is more urbane Chichester Clark is he's a bit of a farmer he's sort of slow he's a bit wooden he's very earnest he has no sort of flair or imagination and Ian Paisley when he was asked what do you make of Chichester Clark he said I've already taken down a captain I reckon I can handle a major so ominous and Chichester Clark inherits a situation that's now really spiraling out of control so in Derry we talked about Derry in Derry random sectarian violence is becoming much more common people being beaten up at night you're walking down the street there's a group of men they say to you what's your name where you're from if you give the wrong answer they basically kick the living daylights out of you there's a terrible story which is in the headlines at this point so in Derry in the Bogside district, a group of policemen had invaded the home of a taxi driver called Samuel Deveni and they beat him up so badly that he later died of his injuries.

47:58Dominic Sandbrook:And this is a huge scandal. And on top of all this, there has just been a by-election in Mid-Ulster, a Westminster by-election, and the winner was the 21-year-old Bernadette Devlin of the People's Democracy Group, who at the time became the youngest woman ever to win a Westminster seat. and she gave her maiden speech on the 22nd of april in the commons in in london westminster she gave a speech that got enormous attention and praise at the time especially from sort of more left-leaning papers in in britain she said there can be no justice in northern ireland while the unionists run it they are corrupt bigoted and self-interested she basically dared harold wilson to abolish stormont and and rule northern ireland from westminster i was reading the speech yesterday it's a very telling moment she says to him people are saying now maybe you could send in troops to keep the peace she says this is a very bad idea if british troops are sent in i should not like to be either the mother or the sister of an unfortunate soldier stationed there the one point in common among ulstermen is they are not very fond of englishmen who tell them what to do so they'll be enjoying this podcast surely i suspect that what northern ireland audience we have switched off when they heard the first two minutes of the of the first episode and the dulcet tones of ian paisley being being performed by somebody from wiltshire yeah can i just say i i

49:26Tom Holland:checked with my friend michael taylor who is um from ulster yeah a man of very strong opinions no He has very strong opinions and he wouldn't be afraid to tell me that I was making a catastrophic mistake. I'll tell you what he said. He said, I would love to hear it. He'd be the third great Ballymina figure to feature on the show after Neeson and Casement.

49:47Dominic Sandbrook:Well, and we've had Neeson again. Yeah. In some ways, too much Liam Neeson on the show, I think. He's like the Welsh. He just keeps getting in. All right. So Bernadette Duffin has given her speech. What's Harold Wilson up to? Wilson and his government. You know, they've lost Terence O 'Neill now. They've got this other bloke, Chichester Clark. And on the 7th of May, the cabinet have a meeting. And Jim Callaghan says to, look, you know, I know we hate talking about Northern Ireland because it's really boring. But we have to talk about it. Here are the different options. And he says one of the options is we could send in troops and run the province ourselves.

50:18Dominic Sandbrook:And loads of Harold Wilson's ministers say, oh, that's mad. No, we don't know anything about this. Like, best not get involved. We don't know anything about it. So Dennis Healy, the defence secretary, also an Anzio man, of course, with a famous hinterland. dennis healy says and i quote it would be crazy to go in there and take things over we will be siding with the roman catholics and the civil rights movement against the government and the iuc although we know nothing at all about it that line we know that's all about

50:49Dominic Sandbrook:the amazing thing about this i think that's so comical in some ways that runs through this story for about 10 years as people in britain say well obviously we know nothing at all about this and we never will so so let's either not get involved or just make terrible random decisions but obviously informing themselves about it would be that landish yeah i mean he wants to bother with something as dull as that whenever they say we know nothing about it they talk as though that's like a fact of nature or an act of god that cannot possibly be remedied and they shouldn't be ashamed

51:21Tom Holland:of it isn't that a legacy of how intractable the irish question was in the the early decades of the 20th century that it's it's hardwired into british politicians we don't understand this

51:32Dominic Sandbrook:we don't understand this and there's something wrong with you if you take an excessive interest in it it's it's somehow suspect to be overly informed about this and the best thing to do is to take no interest in it whatsoever of course though the british government may not be interested in northern ireland but northern ireland is going to be interested in them and a big theme of this story is that british governments are constantly sort of struggling to catch up because they are always behind the pace of events so the 12th of july there are um big parades this is the high point of what's called the marching season so for people unfamiliar with northern ireland there are annual parades held by the orange order and other protestant societies to celebrate things like the battle of the boyne in 1690 and they are always tense and this time 12th of july 1969 1969, the sort of fighting and rioting surrounding the parades is worse than ever.

52:25Dominic Sandbrook:And in the next few weeks, there is more rioting, especially in Belfast. You have rival gangs forcing Catholic and Protestant families out of their homes, you know, different gangs. And everybody knows the next flashpoint will come on the 12th of August, because this is the annual march of the Apprentice boys of Derry. So this is the biggest of all Northern Ireland's Protestant parades, and it commemorates the relief of Derry by William of Orange's troops in 1689. Derry had been under siege by James II and the sort of Jacobite army, and the Protestant William of Orange, William III, relieved the city.

53:05Dominic Sandbrook:And it's seen as this totemic moment in the history of Ulster the Protestants, and they market every year, 15 ,000 members of the Orange Order march through the streets. Flutes, drums, they're wearing the sashes, they've got the bowler hats on. They would say, I mean, they do say, to this day, this is an expression, it's one of our great communal traditions, an expression of our history, of our culture, of our identity.

53:36Tom Holland:There was that famous image of an American tourist in a cab getting caught up in it and thinking it was great and kind of grooving along to it. Loving Irish customs.

53:46Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, exactly. I remember that. Yeah, it was so comical. Now, obviously, in 1969, this is going to be incredibly fraught. James Chichester Clark could ban it. He has the power to ban it. But of course he's not going to because that would tank his reputation among the Protestants of Northern Ireland. and it would be a massive gift to Ian Paisley. He's never going to ban it. James Callaghan as Home Secretary could ban it, but Callaghan decides I'm not going to ban it. A delegation of Labour backbenchers went to see him and said, come on, Jim, what are you going to do about this march? He said, we have a policy we don't interfere in Northern Ireland.

54:22Dominic Sandbrook:The problems of Northern Ireland should be solved within Northern Ireland without any outside intervention. Goes back to your point about the Irish question. Basically, he would say we've learned in Britain to stay out of Ireland and to get involved as little as possible because when we do it always goes wrong. But of course this means the march goes ahead and this sets the stage to one of the landmark set-piece confrontations of the entire Troubles. So we're in early August. In Derry the Catholics are preparing for a fight. They have set up a Citizens Defence Association under an IRA veteran called Sean Keenan.

54:56Dominic Sandbrook:They are stockpiling petrol bombs, they are planning barricades at street corners, they're preparing for trouble. We get to the night of the 11th, the day before the parade. The first barricades go up in the Catholic bog side area. But in the Protestant areas, people have already lit bonfires celebrating the parade. Everybody knows this is going to be very, you know, it's going to be very spicy tomorrow. The 12th dawns at noon, the apprentice boys, as they're called, the kind of fraternal order and their allies, they form into parade order on the city walls. And below, there are groups of Catholic teenagers and young men shouting abuse up at them, and they're throwing coins down, a traditional gesture of contempt.

55:39Dominic Sandbrook:They're throwing pennies down at the Catholics below. A couple of hours later, the first scuffles break out. People are throwing nails and stones as the apprentice boys set off on their march. The RUC, the police, have put barriers to keep the two sides apart. But by late afternoon, most of these barriers had been dismantled and basically the march was degenerated into a kind of general melee at this point desperate to kind of regain control of the streets the ruc launch a baton charge into the bog side so this is a kind of fairly tightly packed catholic area of londonderry or derry and when they go advanced they're actually walking into a trap because the derry citizens defense association they've got kids with petrol bombs on top of the high-rise flats at the entrance to the bog side so they're throwing down these petrol bombs and as night falls there's a scene of total chaos there are baton charges petrol bombs there are burning shops the ruc bring up their water cannons they start firing tear gas it's an incredible sort of scene of disorder by dawn the next morning which is the 13th the bog side has basically become a battle zone the RUC are camped at just outside it kind of holding a front line inside it people have set up emergency first aid stations they've got women and children and kind of relays making petrol bombs and they've they've got a kind of weird catapult thing on top of these high-rise flats it's like firing petrol bombs down at the police one British reporter who was there said he said I wasn't really shocked by the hatred of the Catholic residents for the police because I I kind of expected that.

57:16Dominic Sandbrook:He said, what shocked me was the hatred coming from the RUC, from the police themselves. And I quote, the obscenities, the threats, the religious tauntings, and all coming from a peacekeeping force. But it has to be said, Derry's Protestants don't see it that way. So I mentioned Peter Taylor's book, Loyalist. In that book, he's got a quote from a shop assistant who went down to the front line to help the police. And this bloke said, what I saw was an insurrection. I saw groups of people defying law and order trying to destroy Northern Ireland and the police with a bulwark against them they needed all the help they could get so all day the fighting continues and then night falls on the 13th is a day too remember and it's still a stalemate the RUC is still camped at the entrance to the bog side there are shops and homes burning there are clouds of tear gas and at this point the Derry Citizens Defence Association issues a public statement and they say we're appealing to every able-bodied man in Ireland to come and help us.

58:15Dominic Sandbrook:Now, every able-bodied man in Ireland, of course, there are a lot of people in Ireland who live in the Republic of Ireland. And all this time, the government in Dublin has really tried to stay out of this. Remember, they still have this sort of nominal claim to the entire island of Ireland, which they have never really bothered to pursue. All this time, they have issued well-meaning statements defending Catholic interests, but they have kept pretty quiet. But that evening, the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, so he's from Cork, actually, he says, okay, I'm going to have to say something. You know, I have to.

58:53Dominic Sandbrook:And he's quite a mild-mannered man. You can see the clip online. Lynch goes on Irish TV and he says, we've been watching in horror the scenes in Derry and this cannot continue. The Parliament of Northern Ireland has clearly lost control and the Irish government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse. He says, I'm asking the British to allow UN international peacekeepers to keep the two sides apart. And I've told the Irish army to set up field hospitals along the border so that injured Catholics who don't want to go to northern Irish hospitals can be treated by our army field hospitals.

59:34Dominic Sandbrook:The Irish Army. Right. And as soon as you mentioned the Irish Army, right, that makes things immeasurably worse. Because in Northern Ireland, the reaction to Lynch's speech is like, oh, my God, the Irish Army are coming. They're going to get stuck in as well. And loads of people completely wildly don't really pay attention to the details of his remarks, but they just genuinely assume that the Irish Army is about to cross the border and it's really all going to kick off. So in the bog side, people are delighted. They're like, brilliant. Our co-religionists are coming to our aid. but local protestants in the town and the surrounding villages they're like oh my god the irish army are coming we've got to go and support our police so they all pile into the streets to support the ruc you then that evening have a scene of unbelievable chaos so the ruc who actually fighting the people in the bog side there's now a third element which is this great protestant mob which breaks through the ruc lines into the bog side the catholics then pile into them massive fighting one ruc man starts shooting and wounds two people how many people have died in this have anybody died nobody has died yet meanwhile that same night um so we're on the 13th so jack lynch has made a speech it's day two fighting breaks out in belfast people in belfast have been watching this and everybody in belfast now is expecting a similarly apocalyptic showdown at belfast so to quote one young loyalist everybody was involved the whole community basins of water were set out and doors left open for people to run into everybody was bracing themselves what they believed was going to be a massive attack from the nationalists on the falls road of course the people on the falls road are expecting exactly the same thing they're like oh the people on the shanker road are about to attack us so we enter the third day of this thursday the 14th of august in derry the ruc are basically exhausted they've lost control they send out a call mobilize all the b specials and all these b specials start to assemble outside the bog side with all their weapons right then they've got makeshift weapons and all this they're intermingle with crowds of protestant teenagers and young men and whatnot getting ready to launch like let's go in and take this by force in belfast things are actually if anything even worse it's properly kicked off in Belfast.

1:01:52Dominic Sandbrook:So there were loyalist gangs roaming the streets. They're throwing petrol bombs into Catholic schools. They're burning down Catholic houses. You know, we're right back in the 1920s, back in 1921 or 22 or something. Meanwhile, you've got the first gunfights between the police and the IRA. Remember, the IRA had gone quiet in the 1960s, but they had not gone away. And the local IRA commander in Belfast, Liam McMillan, has called up some of his old comrades, says come on we've got to go and defend our people but you asked about guns before they don't have many guns they have two submachine guns they've got a lee enfield rifle and they've got six revolvers so that's sort of all competing to see who gets the guns and the fighting becomes concentrated on divish street so when you look at the map the people are interested divish street is basically the entrance to the catholic falls road area and there you have the ira firing with these two machine guns and whatnot at loyalists and the police and the ruc are firing back with armored cars with heavy machine guns on the armored cars and in all of this kind of chaos the armored cars start firing into the high-rise flats uh the divish street flats and they hit a catholic school boy called patrick rooney who was in bed trying to sleep through this and he was the first child killed in the troubles he was just nine years old actually the amazing thing is that the casualties aren't even higher seven people were killed in total two of them shot by the ira one by loyalists and four of them by the security forces probably a thousand injured it's hard to tell because it was often said that catholics would be less likely to go to hospital but what's very ominous of the people injured more than a hundred of them are injured with gunshot wounds so this is the point where the shooting has really started in earnest 200 homes are destroyed probably get just under 2 000 families have to flee their homes and a lot of those end up basically going as refugees across the irish border i mean as as melodramatic as it sounds the irish government actually established kind of refugee camps on their on the southern side of the border.

1:04:03Dominic Sandbrook:Now, in Britain, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, who of course can't have been expected to do anything about this because they don't know anything about it, they're watching the TV pictures in absolute horror. Because it's pretty clear at this point that unless something changes, Northern Ireland is going to head for a full-scale kind of civil war. And the pressure to intervene is overwhelming. So the civil rights campaigners, people like John Hume and Gerry fit in the last couple of days have started begging westminster to send troops jerry fit tells the story that on the 14th of august he's in belfast he's actually taken refuge from the fighting in a bookmakers that's his excuse anyway he's in a bookies and he says a crowd of catholic people came in and they were quote screaming and shouting that they were going to be murdered in their beds and begging begging me to get the army in and he rang james callaghan and said i'm pleading with you Jim send in the army and I'll never forget his reply Jerry he says I can get the army in but it's going to be a devil of a job to get it out so it's a very good story whether this actually happened I don't know but actually the decisive request comes from Stormont itself from the Northern Ireland government late that afternoon the 14th of August James Chichester Clark formally asked London to send troops into the streets of Derry now Callaghan when he got the call was on a plane he was coming back almost unbelievably he was coming back from the city isles where he'd gone to meet harold wilson who was on holiday in his shorts and he got a note from the navigator on the plane basically chichester clark was asking you to send in the troops permission to send in the troops and callahan scribbled on a note on it and handed it back to the navigator the words permission granted and at five o 'clock that afternoon the first battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment march towards the bog side.

1:05:55Dominic Sandbrook:And almost immediately at that point, the various combatants kind of downed tools and retreated back into their homes and whatnot. And the next afternoon, the 15th, Calan got a second request. This time, can you send troops into Belfast as well? And by nightfall on the 15th, the British soldiers are marching down the Catholic Falls Road. and this is a massive moment in this story a massive moment i mean we grew up with british troops on the streets of northern ireland but this is when it all started and all those kind

1:06:30Tom Holland:of search points and helicopters and things and it is obviously seen as a mistake a terrible mistake to send the troops in but what alternative was there if they if they didn't get sent in then the whole thing just explodes and becomes bosnia or whatever it's one of those things that

1:06:49Dominic Sandbrook:american newspapers in the 60s used to always have this joke that you know people americans have gone holiday to ireland they get lost in the lanes of ireland and they you know wind down the window you'd ask a sort of farmer or something how do i get to dublin from here and the farmer would say well to start with i wouldn't start from here and this is i think what you'd say about this story that by the time when you're making that decision do we send troops in or not it's actually too late the ship has sailed you're in a massive mess and you're not going to put it right i think there is no scenario at this point when it's the fighting is so bad when people are firing submachine guns and people are being shot and it's like armored cars with machine guns firing into tower blocks there is no way you're not going to send troops i mean any british government at this point would have sent the troops the problem of course is they have sent the troops and they have absolutely no political strategy about how they're going to put this right and the time to fix it would have been 10 years previously 20 years previously but not now when you've let it get to this that's not very helpful advice is it if you're no it's not helpful advice i wouldn't

1:07:58Tom Holland:start from here yeah so basically they have to do it despite all the horrors that will then follow

1:08:04Dominic Sandbrook:If they hadn't done it, lots of people would have been killed. And everyone would have said, everyone internationally would have said, what an unbelievable act of irresponsibility in the British government. They have this army, but they won't use it to protect citizens of the United Kingdom.

1:08:17Tom Holland:But at this point, it is seen by Catholics as peacekeeping.

1:08:22Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, totally. I mean, this is the great irony of this, right? The British army was sent in to protect, largely to protect Catholics.

1:08:30Tom Holland:because i'm just thinking of withnell and i famous film set in late 69 and and withnell pretends that he's been in the army in a pub in cumbria yes he said i served in northern ireland and the landlord says ah crack at the mick yes but actually that's historically inaccurate because at this point that is not how it is being seen it's a very good point it's seen as protecting

1:08:53Dominic Sandbrook:the catholics exactly so i mean on the british troops almost i mean if the politicians don't know anything about northernland i think it's pretty safe bet that like a load of 18 19 20 year old squadrons don't they have no idea what awaits them there's this famous story that when they sent the first lot of reinforcements the reinforcements were flown into an airfield and they were sort of bused into the center of belfast or to their barracks or whatever and they all stopped at the petrol station to buy maps of belfast because they didn't have any maps and as far as they're concerned this is going to be pretty easy i mean don't forget they've been in cyprus in the 50s they've been in malaya they've been in kenya malaya they had defeated

1:09:33Tom Holland:an insurgency hadn't they of course they had it's the kind of the model of how to defeat an

1:09:37Dominic Sandbrook:insurgency a lesson for the americans vietnam which the americans did not heed and they think well by these standards this is going to be pretty straightforward as far as i understand you can imagine them saying to each other as far as i understand it there's a load of protestants a load of catholics the protestants are kicking seven bells out the catholics our job is to go in tell them to stop separate them and then we can all go home bang job done and at first they are welcomed with open arms i mean you can see the news footage you can see photos you can read the reports online catholics shouting at them thank you for coming people clapping and cheering them uh stories about in derry uh people would bring them fish and chips you know people would kind of winch fish and chips up the city walls to them and stuff there was a in peter taylor's book Brits.

1:10:23Dominic Sandbrook:He has a quotation from an interview with a soldier in Belfast. I felt like a knight in shining armour. Kids were following you everywhere. There were tea and buns and sandwiches. They'd be out there with trays. I must have put on about a stone, this guy says. You can see photos of soldiers leaning on their armoured cars. They're showing kids their guns. They're chatting up housewives. It's very chummy. In fact, so chummy, the old Republicans were shocked by it. So Brendan hughes who was later the commander of the ira in belfast said he said as a you know i was young and i can remember people bringing them tea at the street corners and my dad who was an old kind of ira bloke and my dad objecting to him saying i never thought i would see the day when you know nationalists catholics would be bringing cups of tea and fish and chips and cakes and stuff to british soldiers the end of august so not long afterwards callaghan flies to northern ireland see how it's all going and he goes to Derry he goes to the bog side they've already you know there are already no-go areas that are painted with white lines and he steps over the white lines to go into the no-go areas and it's fine people you know thank him they clap him and stuff they cheer him and when he gets back to London the papers say well James Callahan who'd been a terrible chancellor and had moved to home secretary this Northern Ireland business has completely rebuilt his reputation.

1:11:46Dominic Sandbrook:He was the man of the hour. British decisiveness and sans foi have prevailed. But actually on this trip, Callaghan, because he's not an idiot, he notices that he's getting a lot of smiles from the Catholics, but he's not getting many smiles from the Unionists. And a lot of the hardliners are really not happy at all. As one of them said later, it felt as if we were being invaded by our own army and he has this incredible exchange with ian paisley callaghan who was a baptist said to ian paisley you know dr paisley we're all the children of god and tom what does ian paisley say no we are not mr callaghan we are the children of wrath yeah and i guess at some level paisley is right because at this point august 1969 they are the children of wrath it is too late probably to turn back there is too much distrust there's too much antagonism there's too much violence and i think a point that's probably not brought out as often as it should be because in the wake of the sort of peace agreement there's to some degree a slight culture of forgetting which is completely understandable by the way politically but i think what's underestimated is how much everything that goes wrong a lot of it is willed by people who actively wanted to see things get worse because it would suit their political interests so people who wanted to see fighting and who connived at killing and escalation and all of this so loyalists who wanted to show down with the sort of the enemy within republicans who wanted to see the violence escalate because they wanted to turn people against the british they wanted to get a united Ireland.

1:13:32Dominic Sandbrook:I always think that the obvious parallel is the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. So in 1994 or something, Bosnia, people would say, well, this is all the result of ancient hatreds. There's nothing anyone can do about it. Or they would say, well, actually, it's just being directed by a few malevolent, monstrous people who've led their voters down the road of chaos and hatred and all of this. And actually, the truth is, it's the interplay of two different things. It's the interplay of the context the history of suspicion and conflict which can't be wished away but also individual decision makers we've seen them in already you know ian paisley or whoever or um the people who go who organize the marches or the people who deliberately try to provoke violence or the people who pick up their guns people who for what perhaps seem to them rational political reasons they consciously decide to choose escalation and tension rather than as they would call it appeasement and already actually at this point so we're in late summer of 69 there are lots of people young men largely in belfast and derry who are saying okay well that was round one but round two is coming very soon the state won't protect us we need to protect ourselves we need guns we need to get ready and you know when the shooting starts next time we will be you know we're not going to mess around and the fact they don't have long to wait because on the 10th of october the british government published a report on the recent disorder and insanely this report was written by sir john hunt the man who had led the expedition to conquer everest in 1953 it wasn't the fact that he was a great mountaineer that gave him the expertise he was also in the british army His recommendations were the army should take over kind of military policing from the RUC and let us disband the B specials.

1:15:23Dominic Sandbrook:The Catholics hate them. They see them as a tool of oppression. Get rid. And this sets off three days of rioting in the Protestant Shankill Road. You have this extraordinary spectacle of mobs attacking British troops while waving the Union Jack. You know, we are the defenders of Britain against you. And the climax comes on the night of the 11th. 2 ,000 people marching on these high-rise flats on Divish Street, which have been guarded by lines of British troops. It's a pitch battle, stones, petrol bombs, tear gas, the usual. Somebody starts shooting in the chaos and the troops start shooting back.

1:16:00Dominic Sandbrook:66 people are injured, 21 of them soldiers. Two local men, George Dickey and Herbert Howe, who are both Protestants, are shot dead by the British Army and also killed is a young RUC constable called Victor Arbuckle who's 29. He was married with two very small children, a boy and a girl, and he was killed ironically by a sniper not from the IRA but from the Ulster Volunteer Force. He was the first Northern Irish policeman to be killed in the Troubles but he was not, alas, the last.

1:16:36Tom Holland:no far from it so next time um we will be heading into the 1970s and northern ireland will be spiraling towards effectively a civil war so in the next episode the provisional ira will be entering the story um the british army will be taking its first casualties the bombings will Worson and Ted Heath, hero of our series on 1974, enters the chat and people will be stunned to hear that Ted Heath's government is preparing to take a truly disastrous gamble. What are the odds on that? And then in our final episode, the bloodiest year of the troubles, which is 1972, bloody Sunday in Derry, Bloody Friday in Belfast, and One Last Chance for Peace.

1:17:31Tom Holland:So club members, of course, can hear those two episodes right now. And if you're not a member, you can join them on therestishistory.com. And members also receive our brilliant newsletter full of amazing features, quizzes, competitions, just unbelievable value. Essays by historians. Essays by historians. Who doesn't love an essay by a historian? I know I love an essay by a historian. Of course you do. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Thanks, Dominic. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

1:18:02Dominic Sandbrook:Hi, everybody. Dominic again. Now, here is the clip that we promised you from our show, The Book Club, which talks about Ernest Hemingway's book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and specifically, the history of the Spanish Civil War. So, Spain has not been involved in the First World War at all. It's been a backwater, basically. It's been really politically turbulent. There is a king. It's normally a parliamentary system. Most of Spain is untouched by the modern world. So it feels like there's these huge estates called the Latifundiae, which go back to the Roman period.

1:18:38Tom Holland:I found this extraordinary. I had no idea until I started reading up for this.

1:18:41Dominic Sandbrook:Well, this is true of Spain and Portugal, actually. They would have absolutely gigantic rural estates run by landowners, almost kind of feudal system. The peasants are enthralled to the landowner. and to the church and whatnot. There are parts of Spain that have industrialized the Basque country, the North, and Catalonia. But those are obviously places with separatist movements. So Spain feels very fractured. And there's lots of labor unrest. There's a big anarchist movement. There was a socialist movement. There was a communist party. In the 20s, there was a coup and a general took power called General Miguel Primo de Rivera, you know, under the king.

1:19:22Dominic Sandbrook:But that didn't really work out. They brought back democracy at the beginning of the 1930s, but it's incredibly polarised and unstable between right and left. There are terrible strikes. So, for example, in the North in 1935, there are assassinations. There are kind of paramilitary movements and whatnot. The son of the previous dictator, Primo de Rivera, sets up a little fascist party called the Falange, which actually sort of gives its name really to... It's then co-opted by the right, by the conservatives who win the Spanish Civil War. I mean, whether they're really fascists or whether they're just basically using the fascist label is an interesting question.

1:20:01Dominic Sandbrook:Right, so it all comes to a head in 1936. There's an election at the beginning of the year, which means that a popular front, which is a kind of left-wing alliance of liberals, socialists, you know, sort of left-wing parties, some of the separatists or more nationalist groups from the areas like the Basque Country or Catalonia, they come to power. And there's a lot of social unrest because they want to push through radical changes and the right don't like that. And in July 1936, the army launches, right-wing elements within the army launch a coup. The reason the Spanish Civil War happens is the coup doesn't fully work.

1:20:39Dominic Sandbrook:So basically the trade unions, the big cities in Madrid, Barcelona, and so on, stay loyal to the elected government. So Spain is divided between the rebels, the coup people in the army, and their allies, who are often like big landowners, the Catholic church, and so on, who want to defend the status quo. They've got half the country, often kind of rural areas, more conservative and so on. But the big cities and Catalonia and so on, so Madrid, Barcelona, places like that, they stay loyal to the elected government. So on the one hand, you have what are called the nationalists. And these are the forces of the right, the army, the coup plotters, and so on.

1:21:19Dominic Sandbrook:Effectively, from day one, they have very, very strong international backing from Mussolini in Italy, and then Hitler in Germany. And then on the left, you have the elected government, who are the Republicans, and they get help eventually from the Soviet Union, which is something of a poison chalice. And they do appeal to Britain and France for help, but they don't really get it. And they have help from foreign volunteers. And this war becomes incredibly bitter and incredibly bloody. I mean, this is always the way with civil wars, because people feel it's an existential struggle. The future of their country is at stake.

1:21:59Dominic Sandbrook:They come to believe, you know, their neighbours, the people in the next town, the landowners or the priests or the anarchists or whoever are going to kill them and their families. So we've got to kill them first. People in some places, there are horrendous, horrendous sadistic massacres and things.

1:22:15Tom Holland:I think they found something like at the end of maybe the start of the 21st century or something, that Spain had the highest number of mass graves after Cambodia.

1:22:24Dominic Sandbrook:So if you want to hear the full episode, just go to Apple or Spotify or YouTube and search for The Book Club. And there it is.