700. The Troubles: Bloody Sunday (Part 4)

23:38Dominic Sandbrook:However, the civil rights group NICRA, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.

23:44Tom Holland:Sounds very sinister, doesn't it? Sounds like a kind of pro-smoking lobby.

23:47Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, this group, they have planned a civil rights march to protest against internment, which of course was introduced in August. And this march is scheduled for Sunday the 30th of January. And this is the day that will go down as Bloody Sunday. So they want to do this march, which is technically illegal. And we come now to the day. probably no day in recent british history perhaps all british history has been chronicled so exhaustively d-day perhaps possibly but when i tell you this the savile report which covers this day comes to 10 volumes 5036 pages and about two and a half million words so you haven't listened

24:33Tom Holland:to we have ways on d-day because i think there's a lot more let's spend more your brother and al

24:39Dominic Sandbrook:murray surely arnhem arnhem yes it's always arnhem with them isn't it anyway are you and i going to spend two and a half million words and five thousand pages on bloody sunday big spoiler alert for the listeners we are not we're going to give a very simplified version if you want to read the savile report it is online and we'll see you in 10 years so here is what happens the army and the police authorities in the city agree that if the march goes ahead which it clearly is going to the march is going to defy the government's instructions they want to keep it out of the city center because they want to avoid more attacks on the shops so we'll close off the city center we'll keep the marches within the catholic areas if it turns violent they say we're going to use the army to scoop up as many rioters as possible but we'll be careful about this you know we'll we'll proceed with caution the army should only go in after specific orders and don't confuse rioters and marchers.

25:40Dominic Sandbrook:You know, we don't want bad publicity. Heaven forfend, not bad publicity. Basically, if you've got well-meaning people waving placards, leave them alone. If you've got people throwing bricks at you with masks on, they're the people you arrest. Now, who's going to do the scooping? General Ford thinks that the army in Derry have been too passive, of course. So as the arresting force, he sends to Derry the hardest and most aggressive men that he has. And this is Lieutenant Colonel Wilford's 1st Battalion of the Para Regiment. Now, they're the hardest men. Wilford himself is a really remarkable man, actually, to be commanding such men.

26:19Dominic Sandbrook:Amazing story. So he came from, I think, Leicestershire. He was born to a single mother. He was brought up by his grandparents, and an anonymous donor paid for him to go to Loughborough Grammar School. At Loughborough Grammar School, he turned out to be an absolutely brilliant classicist and actor so he was given a place at rada the royal academy of dramatic arts where all the sort of top lovies go he turned it down and ended up joining the army his idea of relaxation is to read virgil and marcus aurelius in the original in latin the very first world war in the trenches very much although less first world war after he left the army i was reading obituaries of him today and this blew my mind after he left the army with a perhaps a slightly checkered reputation he grew a ponytail and became a belgian antiques dealer it's an unexpected development it's a massively unexpected development anyway in 1972 this bloke commands one of the most feared battalions in the british army they are ultra professional ultra aggressive his men he always has his men kind of blacking up with their faces and wearing camouflage.

27:28Dominic Sandbrook:He says, you know, we're fighters and killers. We're not messing around here.

27:32Tom Holland:What kind of camouflage do you wear in Derry? You kind of dress up in, it looked like concrete or something. Dress as a tower block.

27:39Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. A bollard. I don't know. I think you're just wearing it in case you suddenly sent him a layer at a moment's notice. Well, anyway. Well, he asked himself, what would Marcus Aurelius do? And Marcus Aurelius would be wearing green combat fatigues, no? No, he wouldn't. He'd be dressing up as bollards, fooling the rioters. panting so even before bloody sunday the paris these paris had a a reputation shall we say so a few days beforehand the then young journalist simon hoggett called them in print they are the troops most hated by catholics in troubled areas and he said other british officers regard them as little better than thugs in uniform and actually other officers thought it was a great mistake to sent in the paras and in peter taylor's book brits he quotes officers who said at the time it is mad to be using them to police a non-violent civil rights march but of course ford wants to use the paras precisely because he thinks it will be violent the atmosphere in derry is very tense just three days before the march the ira had ambushed an ruc patrol car and they'd killed two policemen and ford's officers on the ground say to him look this march may start peacefully but the derry young hooligans backed up by the gunman this is a quote the derry young hooligans backed up by the gunman will undoubtedly take control at an early stage and what they're particularly worried about this may actually remind people of a very unlikely parallel which is the german invasion of belgium in 1914 what they're really worried about is snipers you know people shooting from roofs and from sort of behind barricades and things.

29:21Dominic Sandbrook:The paras operational orders explicitly warn them. You should expect IRA terrorist activity. Almost certainly snipers, petrol bombers and nail bombers will support the rioters. And snipers are their biggest fear. Snipers had killed 24 soldiers in the course of 1971. So when you, if you're a para and you wake up first thing in the morning, probably the threat of the sniper is the first thing you think of. but the paras have the reputation they do because they are gung-ho because they're not frightened so one of them later remembers his commanding officer's words the night before let's teach them a lesson we want some kills tomorrow anyway so we get to the day itself when you dig into like the Savile Inquiry you know unless you've got like 10 years to spend reading this stuff it's daunting the amount of detail minute by minute detail but actually the big picture of it's pretty straightforward lunchtime the marchers assemble and they set off just before three o 'clock in the afternoon there are about 12 000 of them and the atmosphere contrary to expectation at first is pretty relaxed pretty upbeat actually there were people at the time said it was almost like a carnival atmosphere people were quite jolly they set off by half past three they're approaching the city center it is of course blocked off sealed off by an army barricade on william street and So at that point, most of the marchers turn right, going towards the bog side.

30:46Dominic Sandbrook:They're going to stop when they get to Free Derry Corner, as it's called, the entrance to hear speeches, people denouncing internment. Now, back at William Street by the barricade, blocking off the city centre, there are some scuffles between rioters and the paras. Teenagers basically throwing stones at the British army. And this is where the first shots are fired. The paratroopers fire five rounds and they wound a teenage boy and a 59-year-old man. But they don't kill anybody.

31:15Tom Holland:But that is what they've basically been ordered to do. To wound hooligans and rioters.

31:21Dominic Sandbrook:And a few minutes later, there is a sniper shot. So he's an official IRA man. He fires a single shot. He misses the soldiers and he hits a drainpipe. So this is not long before four o 'clock. A 3.55, Lieutenant Colonel Wilford asks permission from the commanding officer in Derry. He says, I wonder, can we send in the paras to pick up yobbos? That's his phrase. And 12 minutes pass, and then he gets the confirmation from the overall Derry commander as follows. Yes, fine. Send in a paras subunit to do scoop up op through barrier 14, not to conduct running battle down Rossville Street. Now, this last sentence is totally ignored because a few minutes later, a convoy of armored personnel carriers come screaming down the road, down Roswell Street, into the box side.

32:15Dominic Sandbrook:And paratroopers jump out and they immediately start grabbing people from the crowd, hitting them with kind of rifle butts, firing rubber bullets at this stage at them, and so on and so forth. And it's a scene, you've seen it so many times in this story, in this series, the story of the troubles. chaos hundreds of people screaming people running away in panic some people taking refuge behind rubble barricades throwing stones and things but most people just running away and the paras claimed later that it was at this point that they came under fire from snipers on top of the high rise flats overlooking the scene this i think the self-help inquiry established beyond any possible doubt is just not true there were no witnesses that saw snipers there were no guns found there were no bullets found afterwards there was nothing what effectively happens in the next few minutes is that the paratroopers completely lose control i mean it's not an unfamiliar story with people policing crowds you know it's a terrible story but it's not unknown well i suppose i mean the

33:20Tom Holland:a vietnam comparison that ted kennedy made it's that kind of my lie or something yeah it's soldiers

33:27Dominic Sandbrook:frazzled on the edge commit atrocities yeah i mean this is the funny thing about it cost 200 million pounds to this inquiry but i remember reading you know i was researching my book on the early 70s at that point when the report came and i thought you know this is exactly as i thought it always would be this would be the the outcome because like you know psychologically from everything we know about how people behave in these situations this makes complete sense they sort of panic they're over pumped up as it were they're very hard men they are trained killers they're also very young men they lose control they start shooting they fire more than 100 rounds into the crowd they hit 26 people and they kill 13 people and most of the people they kill are very young.

34:13Dominic Sandbrook:Six of them of the 13 were 17 years old. Most of the people they kill were running away, running to safety. Some of them were trying to help the injured, but we know that a lot of them were shot in the back. And the most famous image of the day is a Catholic priest called Edward Daly. And you can see the photos online. It's one of the ones that comes up immediately if you Google Bloody Sunday. It's a priest and he's waving a blood-stained handkerchief as a white flag and they're trying to carry this guy to safety 17 year old jackie duddy and duddy dies just moments later um the priest edward daly was holding his hand and giving him the last rights as he died and as you said why this all happened is quite a straightforward i think question to answer if you send trained killers renowned for their aggression to police a march and if you tell them you're going to be attacked by snipers you're making it quite likely that they will lose control so this is i mean general ford had actually said it himself that's why i read the quotation out he'd said it in december the risk of casualties is high so-called unarmed rioters possibly teenagers are certain to be shot much will be made of the invasion of dairy and the slaughter of the innocent now did the paras feel guilty after this had happened the short answer is no one of them says in uh in in the book brits that i mentioned he says we saw it as a job well

35:38Tom Holland:done i mean this is possibly a heretical question yeah bearing in mind the military situation was it a job well done in other words did it serve as a salutary atrocity which made people think

35:54Dominic Sandbrook:twice no absolutely not if you're going to take such a cold-blooded view of it which i mean it's No, it's a fair question to ask, right?

36:03Tom Holland:Yeah, it's the Richard III, you know, they did it and they were right to do it kind of thing.

36:07Dominic Sandbrook:Absolutely not. Because, I mean, the evidence is in what happens in the next 11 months in Northern Ireland and indeed in the next 20 odd years, which is things got a lot worse. And it completely, as we'll see, it completely destroys the reputation of the British Army and corrodes beyond measure the relationship between them and much of the local population. So absolutely not. if you were taking the most Machiavellian kind of possibly or Clausewitzian interpretation, then no, absolutely not at all. And what happens to the free dairy? Still there. Do they not go in and bulldoze it? No, not at this point.

36:42Dominic Sandbrook:No, that happens much later. Think of Operation Motorman, but not at this point. No. Just on the paras, actually, the job well done thing. I guess to the end of their lives, a lot of the paras, I mean, they maintained and presumably still maintain that they did the right thing and they were shooting in self-defense. And actually, a really interesting person who's written about this, a very unexpected person, is the extremely right-wing journalist Douglas Murray. So Douglas Murray went, you know, the assistant editor of The Spectator, or associate editor of The Spectator, he went to the Savile Inquiry and wrote a book about it.

37:17Dominic Sandbrook:And he is incredibly scathing about the paratroopers. he calls them unrelenting liars he says you know they lied and lied and lied about coming under attack about what they did about not shooting people in the back all of this kind of thing they perjured themselves in the savour inquiry i wonder if that's quite right i think it's quite possible in fact psychologically very plausible that they they made up excuses and then came to believe them i mean isn't that such a common thing that people do also i suppose you know your subconscious could tell you that you're hearing things that prompt you to do something that you want to do anyway in the heat of the moment in the chaos people screaming running away gun sounds of gunshots sounds of you know battle you might come to believe you know you might think you might assume you're under fire because you've been told it's possible and then you start shooting and then you lose control over yourself wilford is furious isn't he that blair sets up the inquiry yes even if he's got a ponytail by that point yeah from his belgian antique shop he's absolutely outraged as indeed were not everybody so if you go look into this you can find plenty of people in the army who say it's terrible that our brave boys um were subject to this relentless investigation you know they're in a terrible situation terrible pressure leave them alone equally you can find people in the army who say they were out of control i knew they were out of

38:46Tom Holland:control well because it's a terrible stain on the reputation of the british army so i mean as cameron says you know it's it's unjustified and unjustifiable right cameron said that but that's

38:58Dominic Sandbrook:not what british um politicians said at the time so at the time the government line was that the paris had fired in self-defense and they were tremendous fellows so reginald maudling the next day gave a speech in the commons he didn't say a single word about the 13 victims he said the The paratroopers were defending themselves from people attacking them with firearms and with bombs, which just was not true. And actually, Bernadette Devlin, remember her? Yeah, the MP. She physically attacked Maudling on the floor of the House of Commons. It was an extraordinary thing. She basically came down and basically just laid into him because she was so upset that he was, you know, these people had been killed.

39:37Dominic Sandbrook:And then she saw it. He was smearing the victims. um but actually maudling's constituency agent wrote to him afterwards and said um well while it is never pleasant when people are shot dead i must say i'm glad that at long last the troops have started to get tough and you see that a lot in the british press in the next few days the daily mail our troops are doing an impossible job impossibly well even the guardian the guardian the army has an intolerably difficult time in ireland at times it is bound to act firmly even severely robustly one might say robustly exactly and of course a lot of unionists well certainly loyalists said the more hardline unionists in northern ireland are not terribly sad about it so time magazine interviewed a laborer in a belfast pub who said you know after 13 people had been shot dead he said i wish it had been 1300 of the bastards but of course it's terrible for britain's image in ireland and in america in ireland there was a national day of morning there was huge huge demonstrations this massive crowd assembled outside the british embassy in dublin the police tried to hold them back the crowd started throwing petrol bombs and finally they burned down the chancery building you know it's kind of pretty big deal in a capital where basically nothing ever happens and the big winners from all this i mean you're asking you know what are the if you're being sort of completely ruthless about it what are the implications.

41:04Dominic Sandbrook:Well, the big winners from this are not the British, they're not the Unionists, they are the provisional IRA. So it's not a turning point, but it accelerates a process that's already underway. The breakdown and the legitimacy of the government, the collapse of the relationship between the British and the Catholics, and Republican paramilitary recruitment. Because basically, imagine that you're, let us say you're a middle-class Catholic, you know, who's not terribly sectarian and you know you're of a moderate disposition you look at this story and this story seems to say to you everything that people say about the british is true they're

41:44Tom Holland:murderers and then they lie about it and you could think about the impact of um people of irish descent in britain so you could think of um a man who is the son of irish ancestors irish forebears had a very successful career never said or sung anything political really uh and forms a new band and releases give ireland back to the irish because it's paul mccartney i was hoping it

42:10Dominic Sandbrook:was dennis healy but it wasn't it was paul mccartney it's not dennis healy paul mccartney

42:14Tom Holland:that's that is when he releases that single in the wake of um bloody sunday so to quote one young

42:19Dominic Sandbrook:man another young man events that day probably led more young nationalists to join the provisionals than any other single action by the British. From that day on, money, guns and recruits flooded into the IRA. And the name of that young man was Gerry Adams. And we will be hearing more about him after the break.

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46:01Tom Holland:hello everyone and welcome back to the rest is history it is now february 1972 um and northern ireland is reeling from the shocking events of bloody sunday which happened on the 30th of january 1972 and i guess dominate i mean the massive massive question is where does the

46:22Dominic Sandbrook:province go from here yeah so it's pretty clear i think the stormont parliament is doomed I think it's probably been doomed for a couple of years, certainly from the introduction of British troops. I think it was always on borrowed time. But what happens next is far from settled. The classic idea that Irish Republicans have that the British are desperate to cling on to Northern Ireland is a fallacy. Actually, as we've discussed, a lot of the public are sick of it and a lot of the politicians would love to pull out. So in February 72, Heath and his cabinet have a big chat about it. And it's remarkable.

46:57Dominic Sandbrook:All options are on the table. They talk about redrawing the border, let the Catholic areas join the Republic. We could have a referendum on ending partition. Maybe there's a solution where Northern Ireland remains technically part of the United Kingdom, but has some sort of constitutional association with Ireland.

47:16Tom Holland:I mean, that is kind of the solution that ultimately they get to, isn't it?

47:20Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, that is where they get to. And actually, a point worth making, I think, the place where they get to, the British would have taken that at any point after about 1970. It's absolutely, I mean, I know we joke about being a patriotic podcast, so some people will say, oh, they're very biased or whatever. but frankly when you look at the history of it it's not british obstinacy that stops the peace process happening in the 1970s it's that of other parties the british would absolutely have taken something like the good friday agreement in 1972 and they would have done all the way through i think and in fact ted heath's foreign secretary sir alec douglas hume is on the right of the tory party at this meeting basically says our interests would best be served by by getting rid tell the unionists they should join a united ireland you know the fact that somebody like that is taking that position would have come as a shock i think to a lot of britain's critics because there's an assumption that people in britain i don't know they're sort of a misty eyed attachment to the possession of northern ireland which is just not true at all well that's

48:22Tom Holland:the thing isn't it that that both the um the loyalist and the nationalist um paramilitaries they have a stake in committing violence the british army despite running amok on bloody sunday don't feel strongly committed enough to an ideological position to do anything comparable

48:46Dominic Sandbrook:to that they'd much rather just pull out they would no no question they would basically i think if you're in the army you get the you know you're you're told you're being posted to northern ireland You don't think, brilliant, you know, let's get stuck in. You think, oh, no, really? Anyway, in Northern Ireland itself, the pace of events now is quickening. So the rate of killing increases in February 1972. The IRA alone killed 17 civilians. And then on the 23rd of February, you have news from England. The official IRA have detonated a car bomb at the paratroopers' headquarters in Aldershot by the officer's mess.

49:22Dominic Sandbrook:the troops were away so the car bomb killed seven people these people were respectively five dinner ladies a catholic chaplain and the gardener at the barracks and is this the first

49:35Tom Holland:attack on british soil well it's english soil isn't it because it tends to be england that gets attacked yes because that seems the obvious tactic and it's surprising that they don't do it

49:44Dominic Sandbrook:earlier really well don't forget they had attacked british soil in the 30s at coventry in 1939 but it's you know they suppose they've got limited resources and they want to win the war on the streets of belfast initially it's not really until 1974 75 that they move in earnest to attacking britain but yeah it is the first it's the first sign of something that will recur very ominously so that was the official ira two weeks later an attack by the provisional ira this time in belfast and this the target this time i mean this is a truly awful story the target is the abercorn restaurant in belfast city center so it was catholic owned but the reason they attacked it was probably because the upstairs bar of the abercorn was very popular with soldiers on their evenings off and the bombers were probably two teenage girls because people saw two teenage girls leaving a handbag but the result is a horrendous scene so it was a saturday afternoon the restaurant was packed with shoppers mainly women having coffee two women in their early 20s were killed they were both catholics 140 people were injured there's a i mean some horrible stories a woman who was had been out shopping for her wedding dress lost an arm and an eye a paramedic afterwards said the ambulances were awash with blood it was the most distressing scene i've ever witnessed and now here's the horrible twist they call in all the doctors you know it's an emergency so many people injured one of the doctors who came in was an anesthetist called dr fred barine and he worked through the night on the wounded and when he'd finished he was taken aside and told one of the two women killed was your daughter janet i mean just unbelievable so you've got a sense now that things are really becoming unglued and actually i was listening to some BBC radio reports they went to vox pops on the streets of Belfast and the results are absolutely blood-curdling because people on both sides basically say yeah maybe the British should get out because then we can just crack on and have the civil war so it's a Catholic man he says once they go we'll have a proper civil war the army of the republic will probably intervene and help us which is deluded I think Mr Lynch won't let us down he says they barely have an army exactly then there's an elderly i mean this is the one that always sticks in my mind an elderly protestant housewife she says um yes the british won't stay because the british are soft you know they they're

52:12Tom Holland:you can't rely on the british they're still thinking that after bloody sunday but i think

52:16Dominic Sandbrook:there are a lot of people who thought remember that guy who said why couldn't you shop 1300 rather than 13 yeah i suppose um and this old woman says when the british leave she says we will have to fight with our bare hands shocking and i think what it's interesting about this the reason I wanted to bring it up was the common view is so often that this is a conflict that is imposed on a great mass of peace-loving people by just a tiny minority of monsters. And of course, there are a lot of people who want peace. And most people in Northern Ireland never set off a bomb, never pick up a gun. It would be a gross calumny to accuse them of all being, you know, suffused with sectarian hatred but the paramilitaries are successful because they fill a political need because they do have support and does that mean that people who are

53:08Tom Holland:proactively for accommodation with the other side are our targets they're not targets but they are

53:17Dominic Sandbrook:they find life sometimes they find life very difficult we will meet one such person at the very end of this episode, a very sad story. Yes, I mean, actually, is not Terence O 'Neill a good example of that? Yes, I suppose. His premiership destroyed because he basically was regarded by his base as an appeaser. Kevin Myers in his memoir says, you know, politicians always spoke about a tiny minority of terrorists, but he's very caustic. He said, you know, for every active terrorist, there was probably a support group of at least 50 non-terrorists. Now, of course, that's not everybody, but this is a politically very polarized society in which a lot of people are prepared to make excuses for their own side.

53:59Dominic Sandbrook:And that's not, I don't mean, this is nothing uniquely Northern Irish about this. This is so often the case. So Heath is watching all this in horror. Then he gets the final straw, which is on the 20th of March. The first really major IRA car bomb, because previously there'd been bombs in parcels and things. This was in Lower Donegal Street in the city center. and midday the street was full of shoppers and also school children going home for lunch that the IRA as was often their way they telephoned a warning but they did so so late that it was impossible to act efficiently upon it and they gave the wrong street name anyway in the warning bomb went off it killed seven people including two policemen who were examining the car and three bin men who were working in the road a horrific scene I mean when you read reports of it you know I have to sort of I don't want to kind of give all the quotations because they're so horrible um the the carnage the school children injured glass everywhere body parts everywhere it's awful so two days after this Fulton is summoned to London and he finds Heath completely grim-faced kind of curt and he says okay enough now this cannot go on this is the end you've got two options number one you continue as prime minister of Northern Ireland but we will run law and order for you you lose responsibility for law and order we're going to get rid of internment we're going to have a new vote on the irish border and you have to invite moderate nationalists into your into a coalition government that's option one and option two if you don't take that we're going to shut you down shut down the northern irish parliament we will rule you directly from westminster and fulton cannot i mean it's amazing that he didn't see this coming he cannot believe it he's completely taken aback they have a nine hour argument about it he says to heath i thought you were my friend i feel betrayed by you he's also very offended he says to heath at one point you're treating the parliament of northern ireland like a glorified county council and heath with his legendary tact and charm says well you are yeah so fauntler goes back to belfast when he gets to belfast of course there's been another bomb a bomb by the railway station destroys much of the railway station and injured 17 people in the Europa Hotel next door so the next morning Falkner rings Heath and he says I'm out I'm done you know I'm not going to do what you tell me and so the following day the 24th of March Heath goes on TV across the United Kingdom Heath by the way I mean one thing we haven't really captured Heath is absolutely shattered because you talked about the concatenation of events I think last time heath has just been battling to get european entry through the house of commons and he's just been humiliated by the 1972 minor strike i mean heath has basically had like an hour's sleep in the last six months well no wonder he's rude yeah well he's very rude i mean to be fair he'd be rude anyway so he looks on tv looks gray and strained he says obviously stormwater hasn't worked with shutting it down i am sending um my lieutenant willie whitelaw more of him later to belfast secretary of state for northern ireland he's basically going to be the imperial pro consul in northern ireland and and he tries to end on a jolly note this is a chance at last to bring the bombings and killings to an end but nobody in northern ireland sees it that way do you think he sees it that way no i don't think he of course he doesn't see it that way he's not an idiot he's just saying it because you got it you can't end on a downbeat note and say we're all doomed

57:38Tom Holland:everything's awful nothing's going to get better so basically everybody in northern ireland

57:42Dominic Sandbrook:condemns and the ira said the war goes on now brilliant the gloves are off we're fighting the british falkner gives a press conference and says this is a victory for those who shout lie denigrate and destroy it shows that violence can pay i mean he's not wrong about that no i mean i guess he isn't he isn't wrong absolutely he's not wrong the shipyard workers at harland and wolf descendants of the men who built the Titanic. They walk out, they march through Belfast, chanting against Heath, the IRA, and the Catholic Church. Goodness, what a trinity there. And yeah, Ted Heath is kind of odd in that company, isn't he?

58:15Dominic Sandbrook:He's not a... He's the odd one out. He's a very Anglican-looking man. He's not a Catholic. Although he does like Europe. So he hangs around with a load of European Catholics. And there's a huge demonstration outside Stormont, 100 ,000 people with Ulster flags and Orange Order flags and all this kind of thing. So Heath's Lieutenant Willie Whitelaw flies into Belfast. We met him in the Thatcher episode. We did. Everyone needs a Willie. Everyone needs a Willie. He's your classic. He's another of your absolute classic 70s British politicians who looks like, you know, the most shambling, woolly person you've ever met and yet was a tank commander in Normandy.

58:54Tom Holland:He has massive red cheeks and kind of little red veins running up to his oyster eyes, doesn't he?

59:00Dominic Sandbrook:oyster eyes you've got to say oyster eyes by law when you talk about willie white law and actually he inspires great loyalty i think he does a pretty good job of this actually the top civil servant in northern irons kenneth bloomfield said it was one of the great pleasures of my life to enjoy the company and the confidence of that large emotional sometimes irascible apparently spontaneous but infinitely cunning man imagine someone saying that about you that's brilliant and white law to be fair to him he assembles the team and he says i mean the same thing to say really however awful things are outside however many bombs go off when we're together in private we're going to enjoy ourselves that's the maudling spirit that is very much i mean the country is descending into the abyss but we've got an absolutely terrific drinks cabinet however you know the challenges that he faces are awful so obviously the catholics are completely alienated but so now a lot of the protestants who have swung very much towards the more hardline extreme now a person who sadly for fans of your accents has not featured much in last couple of episodes is the reverend dian paisley and people may wonder why and actually this is quite a sort of a fallow period in paisley's rhetorical career well he's become an mp hasn't he he's become an mp so he's gone off to london so he's not even there he's the flesh pots of westminster exactly but also he's sort of all over the place politically at this point he's been left behind a bit he'd sort of slightly willed this sort of crisis into being by his incredibly inflammatory rhetoric but now that it has arrived you know he's he doesn't really know where he stands so for example paisley was very much against internment paisley was also unusually for a hardline unionist in favor of direct rule from westminster and scrapping stormont i suppose because he thought stormont was full of appeasers probably or something so this leaves a vacancy for a man who's largely forgotten now but is a really extraordinary bloke but called william craig so william craig had been um o 'neill's home affairs minister and he's been moving steadily to the right craig sees this you know he basically sees the vacancy on the right of ulster unionist politics and he thinks i will be the hardliners hardliner and he founded his own party in february 1972 called ulster vanguard and it looks like something i have to say if there are ulster vanguard listeners i hope they're not going to be hideously offended when i say it looks like the sort of fascist party you would imagine in a TV series set in alternative universe, 1970s Britain.

1:01:40Dominic Sandbrook:Or what's his name in Reggie Perrin? Oh, the bloke who wants to set up his own private army. Geoffrey Palmer. Geoffrey Palmer. I think it's more sinister than Geoffrey Palmer, frankly. They have a very fascistic logo, which you can see online, which is a kind of blue V.

1:01:56Tom Holland:That's never a good sign.

1:01:58Dominic Sandbrook:At rallies, he has an honour guard that surrounds him. They wear uniforms with an orange sash. and they also do a kind of Nazi salute.

1:02:08Tom Holland:Now, you know what it is? It's a national theatre reimagining of a Shakespeare Roman play. Daring and edgy that no one's ever thought of before.

1:02:19Dominic Sandbrook:That is exactly. Starring Maxine Peake.

1:02:23Tom Holland:Christopher Eccleston.

1:02:25Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. It's basically, it's a national theatre play produced in 2012, imagining what will happen when David Cameron introduces fascism in Britain. That's what it is. Or in alliance with the fossil fuels industry. So Christopher Eccleston is so involved in this. Yeah, he totally is. He's Coriolanus. Okay, but this bloke, Craig, he is so aggressive. He gives a speech to 60 ,000 people in Belfast, loyalists. He says, we must build up dossiers on the men and women who are a menace to this country. because one day, ladies and gentlemen, if the politicians fail us, it may be our job to liquidate the enemy.

1:03:07Dominic Sandbrook:I don't feel you should be talking about liquidating the enemy.

1:03:10Tom Holland:Well, those are the kind of comments of people who like the Odyssey from people on X. It's about you. Yeah, I know. Let's just see your Musk talking about you. We are at war. We must round up these people who like Christopher Nolan films and shoot them.

1:03:24Dominic Sandbrook:I'm just giving you a flavour of the comments I got. but there's actually more to come from musk stroke william craig so at one point he's invited to address the monday club the hard right conservative club at the house of commons he goes to the house of commons drink has been taken and he throws caution to the wind and he says to his audience of tory mps if a british government stands in our way and don't forget there is a conservative government at this point he says i have 80 000 men ready to take up arms against them we are prepared to come out and shoot and kill i am prepared to kill and those behind me have my full support when we say force we mean force and what does the monday club what's their reaction to this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they hear here and then they start talking about rhodesia surely i mean that's basically the the vibe isn't it now you may say does this man really have 80 000 people behind him i don't think he has 80 000 but i do think he has thousands so his movement was very closely allied to the UDA, the Ulster Defence Association, the Vigilante Alliance that we talked about last time.

1:04:29Dominic Sandbrook:So they, at this point, are at their absolute peak. They had not been prescribed by the government, unlike other paramilitary groups. So they will march openly through the streets. You can see, you can Google photos of them. They will sort of wander through the streets in their dark glasses and military fatigues. They're very popular on the Protestant estates. And I think a reason for this, and something underappreciated, I think I mentioned this in the first episode I think massively underappreciated in the stories the economic context this is a point where on a lot of these estates unemployment among young men it's at least 20 percent in some estates it's 40 or 50 percent basically there are a lot of 20 year old men who left school five years earlier or four years earlier or whatever and have nothing to do so slightly Weimar vibe possibly yeah it's also I mean the one thing we haven't really talked about I think also underappreciated.

1:05:21Dominic Sandbrook:Why do people join all these groups? They're fun. It's fun. Right. They like dressing up. They like being given a gun. They like hanging around with their mates. Violent Boy Scouts. Completely. And the UDA, I mean, the UDA don't have the ideological aspirations of the IRA. They are basically vigilantes stroke gangsters. So there's no spiritual crisis for them? I don't think so. They run protection rackets. They will hijack lorries with TVs in or cigarettes or alcohol or something.

1:05:48Tom Holland:I mean, that's, again, a difference with Paisley, isn't it? Because Paisley is a man of God, even if that is a God of wrath. So he does have to consider what the Bible tells him and the future of his soul and everything. But these guys, they're not.

1:06:04Dominic Sandbrook:No, Ian Paisley never hijacked a lorry carrying bottles of, you know, what's it, bush mills? Is that a thing? That's like a Northern Irish thing, isn't it? Anyway, yeah, and people, journalists would go out to the UDA training camps to inspect them, and they always scoffed at them. So Peter Taylor watched them training outside Belfast, and he reported as follows. A series of overweight loyalists panted for breath as they monkey-climbed a rope suspended above the ground and went through the motions of less than agile hand-to-hand combat. Just jump on people. Crush them. And Kevin Myers said, he doesn't take them seriously at all in his memoir, and he says they were the only terrorist group in the world who designed their own regimental blazer, complete with gold badge.

1:06:49Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, there's been too much laughter because there's nothing funny about loyalist violence in the summer of 72. This is the bloodiest year of the Troubles. It's the peak of sectarian killings. these loyalist paramilitaries probably killed about 120 people that year and these people were not other paramilitaries they are catholic civilians just walking down the street dragged out of pubs sometimes attacked in their own homes and to put that into context the british army killed just under 90 people in 1972 the official ira killed 20 people and the provisional ira killed almost 230 people. Now, talking of the provisional IRA, they are cock-a-hoop with the demise of Stormont.

1:07:33Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, they were only founded at the turn of 1970, and we're in the middle of 1972. The Northern Irish Parliament, which they hated, is gone, and the nationalist population has been well and truly radicalised. As they see it, they are well on the way to achieving their goals. I mean, one IRA man said as follows, everyone felt we were very close to victory. Most people on the ground felt it was only a matter of time before the British were finally going to admit defeat. And so that explains why at this point, spring summer 1972, they do something which some listeners may be surprised by. They are very happy to talk to the British about ending this whole thing, because as they see it, they are in the position of basically dictating the terms of the British surrender.

1:08:21Dominic Sandbrook:So on the 13th of June, they held a press conference in Derry. If the British will agree to peace talks, we'll declare a ceasefire. And Willie Whitelaw publicly says no, but obviously privately he's thinking, well, it'd be mad not to talk to them. Six days later, he quietly met two of their ceasefire conditions. So first of all, he awarded IRA prisoners special category status, which means they will not be treated as common criminals. They will be treated as political prisoners. So for example, they can wear their own clothes, which becomes a huge deal in the hunger strikes in 1981. And the other condition, he agrees to release a bearded young man who has been interned on a prison ship, HMS Maidstone.

1:09:06Dominic Sandbrook:And this young man has been accused of being a commander of a Belfast IRA battalion. This young man is the 23-year-old Jerry Adams, who, as you know, Tom, maintains that he was never a member of the ira so he's been wrongly interned yeah in his own mind wrongly interned indeed wrongly well i mean his entire presence in the next few minutes of this episode is bewildering a terrible it's bewildering mistaken identity is a terrible case of mistaken identity what's that barman doing there he's inexplicably being invited to all these meetings when he has nothing to contribute so the day after adams was released uh two british officials drive to a country house outside derry one of them is whitehall's senior civil servant philip woodfield and the other is a senior mi6 officer called frank steel and waiting for them waiting for them are an ira man since the 1950s called david o 'connell and baffling me jerry adams so you're kind of intern work placement yeah who knows who knows why he's there so for three hours they have this um meeting and they agree a deal they'll have a temporary ira ceasefire uh steel the mi6 man and o 'connell basically set up a telephone hotline so they can talk to each other and the ira will meet with white law himself and woodfield reports to white law he says um the mood at this meeting this again may surprise listeners.

1:10:36Dominic Sandbrook:He says, the mood was very informal and very relaxed. The two Irishmen were respectable and respectful throughout. They made no bombastic defense of their past, and they made no attacks on the British government, the British army, or any other communities or bodies in Northern Ireland. Their response to every argument put to them was reasonable and moderate. And he says to Whitelaw, I think they genuinely want a ceasefire and a permanent end to violence. Now, sort of more hardline listeners may say, gosh, this bloke's gone completely native. But the MI6 man, Steele, went even further. He said of David O 'Connell, he was a very quiet, self-contained and self-disciplined man.

1:11:15Dominic Sandbrook:I know it's an unfashionable thing to say, but I liked him. And he has a remarkable exchange with Gerry Adams, whom Steele finds very personable and intelligent. And Steele said to Adams, you don't want to spend the rest of your life on the run from us British. What do you want to do with your life? And Adams said to him, I want to go to university and get a degree. And Steele said, well, we're not stopping you. All you've got to do is renounce violence and you can go to university and get a degree. And Adams actually stopped and thought for a minute or two and then said to Steele, no, I've got to help to get rid of you British first.

1:11:49Dominic Sandbrook:How do you do that if you're just a barman? So, I mean, he would say through political means, through membership of Sinn Féin, but not the IRA, would he not? Yeah, I guess he would. So two days later, they announced a ceasefire to begin on Monday, the 26th of June. And then on the 7th of July, a really extraordinary moment. Top secret, an IRA delegation has flown to London for secret talks with Willie Whitelaw. Four of them are longstanding IRA men, but two of them are much younger. One of them is Martin McGuinness, who is the second in command of the Derry IRA and was present at Bloody Sunday.

1:12:25Dominic Sandbrook:and the other, yet again mistaken identity, no one knows why is there, Jerry Adams. And Martin McGuinness. Yeah, Martin McGuinness, exactly.

1:12:33Tom Holland:Big fan of cricket and P.G. Woodhouse.

1:12:36Dominic Sandbrook:Was Martin McGuinness a fan of cricket?

1:12:38Tom Holland:He loved it. Yeah, he loved it.

1:12:40Dominic Sandbrook:And he liked P.G. Woodhouse.

1:12:42Tom Holland:Yeah. Wow. My brother was Jerry Adams' publicity agent.

1:12:46Dominic Sandbrook:Of course he was, I'd forgotten that, yeah.

1:12:48Tom Holland:And Martin McGuinness was a very charming man. I mean it got on very well with Ian Paisley as well of course the Chuckle Brothers

1:12:56Dominic Sandbrook:just to clear this up for listeners your brother was Gerry Adams' agent in his capacity as a publisher yes yes his book had come out your brother was not a member of Sinn Féin

1:13:08Tom Holland:I mean that's a hell of a twist although Gerry Adams would always send him a Christmas card and they would be you know Happy Christmas and there'd be a kind of Christmas tree wrapped up in barbed wire Oh, my God. It stuck out in his Wiltshire cottage.

1:13:23Dominic Sandbrook:And also, Gerry Adams and Christmas cards, the best ever moment in the history of social media. Oh, yes. Is when Gerry Adams was trying to reinvent himself on social media as an avuncular grandfather and said he was having trouble with his Christmas lights. Can no one give me a lighter? Yeah. Somebody replied and said, surely you must know somebody who can fit a timer. But, of course, he wouldn't because he wasn't a member of that organisation. He had a terrible problem with wind, and he was better out than in. Ah, terrible. I knew he was a bad man. So they're flown. They're going to go to London.

1:13:52Dominic Sandbrook:It's a farcical journey. Their car breaks down. All six of the delegates have to cram into one car. They're picked up by an MI6 minivan. The minivan gets stuck behind a farmer and some cows. A very Irish scene. And finally, they get to London. They're driven to Chelsea, to a place called Cheney Walk. It's the home of Whitelaw's junior minister, Paul Channon. It's a really hot day. Whitelaw's waiting for them. He offers them drinks. They refuse. there's some suspicion that they might have thought Whitehall was going to poison them. I think that's obviously ludicrous. He wasn't going to poison them.

1:14:26Dominic Sandbrook:I think it's much more that they are, because there's so many of them, they can't really relax because they're all watching each other. And of course, there is a precedent for IRA men going to London, which we've done on the rest is history, the Anglo-Irish treaty negotiations. And then all the talk was, you know, selling out and people becoming, you know, Michael Collins falling for the blandishments of the British. So they had determined not to do this and they're very stiff and serious. And the tone is set by the IRA chief of staff, a man who calls himself Sean McSteven. And he is an absolutely extraordinary figure.

1:15:04Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, he's basically a massive fraud, right? I mean, he is a massive fraud. So his real name, as it were, is John stevenson and he was from east london his father was not irish but an english legal clerk his mother was bethlan green born and bred she did have irish blood but ulster protestant blood but

1:15:26Tom Holland:he's like the kind of guy who's incredibly english but insists on supporting ireland in rugby

1:15:32Dominic Sandbrook:exactly he goes to a leading public school and wears an ireland rugby shirt that's exactly the kind of man this is although from beth of more bethnal green kind of um vintage so he was in the raf for some reason i don't know he got radicalized he learned irish he changed his name galicized it became ultra catholic and basically became more irish than the irish and what would drive him mad is that the other ira men used to call him the englishman which he was he was exactly but because he was more irish than the irish so he was ultra catholic he didn't drink he didn't smoke he was passionately anti-abortion he had no sense of humor his hard work basically so he's quite de valera yeah a little bit i mean we talked before when we were talking about the late fuhrer of nazi germany what a terrible person he'd be to have at your wedding this bloke would be awful as a wedding guest because of course again like hitler doesn't drink doesn't smoke and is only going to talk to you with sort of apparently he would adopt a fake irish accent kevin myers in his memoir is very realistic about his like that snp yeah the snp woman who has the fake scottish who changes her accent depending on where she is so he does the talking anyway at this meeting presumably in his accent he reads a list of demands he says we need you to release all prisoners total british withdrawal you've got till 1975 and have an all ireland referendum on ending partition.

1:16:58Dominic Sandbrook:So he doesn't say you've got to get out nigh. No, he does not. So the all-Ireland referendum on ending partition, of course, an all-Ireland referendum would mean the end of Northern Ireland. The British position is and always has been, and indeed from the 1990s, the Irish position, is that this is for the people of Northern Ireland as a distinct unit to decide, but that's not the IRA's position.

1:17:24Tom Holland:I mean, an all-Ireland referendum, yeah would it definitely i guess the emotional case for it would be so strong wouldn't it but the practical it would be head and heart the emotional case would be very strong if you're

1:17:34Dominic Sandbrook:living in like i don't know waterford in 1972 and somebody says do you now feel your life would be materially improved by the addition of northern ireland with all of its issues to your you know your national unit what would you think i mean i think the national case would be so strong yes i

1:17:53Tom Holland:I think you wouldn't be able to resist the promptings of your heart, but your head might say, not sure. Yeah, this is not ideal.

1:17:59Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, the IRA clearly have misread this situation because there is no way the British are going to give into this. And it became obvious, I think, to Whitelaw and to Frank Steele, who was there. The IRA basically thought they'd won and the British were negotiating their surrender. And that was a complete and utter misreading of the situation. So it breaks up the meeting. They go back to Belfast and Steele is with them. the mi6 man is with them the whole time and he says to them on the flight back i'm yeah i'm so disappointed and he says to them i hope you're not going to go back to your bloody stupid campaign of violence i said if they really wanted a united ireland they were wasting their time shooting at british soldiers and bombing northern ireland into an industrial and social slum they should be trying to persuade the protestants that they would have some sort of satisfactory life jobs housing and so in some sort of linkage with the south and still remembered later he said no they said to me we've got to get rid of you british first and the way to get rid of you as has been proved

1:19:00Tom Holland:all over your empire is violence you will get fed up and go away and you could see why that might not be a wholly unreasonable perspective that we've been saying throughout the people in mainland britain are weary and bored of it they're not interested they wish it would all go away people in the IRA are not stupid I mean they must they're keeping track of British public opinion they must know this I mean that is why in due course they're going to start bombing the mainland

1:19:28Dominic Sandbrook:but actually they don't withdraw no they don't but actually one of the reasons I think is that precisely because the IRA do start bombing the British mainland actually so I think once the IRA do that there is no way the British would ever withdraw because you cannot surrender to the men of violence no but i mean you can't i mean to blow if you blow up um british pubs in birmingham guildford and so on if you blow up a coach on the m62 if you blow you know bombs in london if you have bombs in piccadilly all of that stuff once you do that there then that will harden the british public against you i think the ira completely misread the british public in that regard there was no way they were ever going to withdraw once the ira attacked britain itself the tragic irony of all this is that if they'd done a deal then in 1972 they'd have probably got what they got in 19 in the late 1990s yeah a lot of lives would have been saved but of course the reason they don't do the deal is because they think they'll get a better outcome by fighting i think there's that plus i think at the time the conflict is not very old and this is probably again a heretical thing to say but i think there are quite a lot of people who enjoy the conflict actually on both sides loyalist and uh republican one ira man said um maybe you can't bomb a million protestants into united ireland but you could have good fun trying and i think there are a lot of people as horrendous as it will sound to some listeners who actually found it very exciting yeah the safe houses the smuggling of guns the operations all of that and there are there are

1:21:07Tom Holland:people in the rishami who find it exciting as well aren't there though you know kind of undercover British officers what's his name Robert Nyrac yeah Robert Nyrac so a couple of days later the

1:21:16Dominic Sandbrook:ceasefire ends street battles again a huge new surge of violence so nine days after the end of the ceasefire the IRA the UDA and the British army between them killed 42 people and by the end of 1972 to give you the stats there'd been 2 ,000 bombings 2 ,000 armed robberies more than 10 ,000 shootings 5 000 people badly wounded 479 people killed and to be honest there's only so many of these atrocities we can really inflict on an audience so heath makes one more attempt to find a peaceful solution there's a massive loyalist strike in 1974 there's of course the hunger strikes under margaret thatcher in 1981 we'll come back to that another time but i'll leave you with just a story that i think says so much about what happened to northern ireland in not an entirely joyful way.

1:22:02Dominic Sandbrook:So on the afternoon the 21st of July, that is two weeks after the failure of these talks, the provisionals set off 22 bombs in the centre of Belfast and they gave a series of hoax warnings that confused the authorities that meant that they couldn't evacuate the scene. These bombs go off over the course of just over an hour, they killed nine people and they seriously injured 130 people and some of the bodies that were blown up they were scattered so far that on the TV news that night the the pictures showed policemen literally scooping up body parts into bags and this went down as bloody friday and it actually did tremendous damage to the ira lost them a lot of moderate nationalist support and lost them support in america and one of the victims i mean this is an awful story one of the victims was a messenger boy who was 14 years old called stephen parker and he had spotted a car bomb in cave hill road and he was trying to warn people when it went off and he was killed and his father the reverend joseph parker was a church of ireland chaplain at a sailor's mission in belfast and he went along he was asked to identify his son's body and it was so badly uh injured that he could only identify his son's body by a box of trick matches that his son had shown him the night before in his pocket and his Boy Scouts belt, of which his son was very proud.

1:23:27Dominic Sandbrook:And afterwards, the Reverend Parker set up a peace group in his son's memory. It was called Witness for Peace. And he held services outside City Hall in Belfast and also the GPO in Dublin. And he would plant a white cross for every victim of the troubles. so quite moving story but here's the twist people didn't like it they didn't like him campaigning for peace his own church did not like it his own bishop said can you please stop talking about peace it alienates our parishioners and can you confine your peace activities to your day off and so in 1975 the reverend parker and his wife left northern ireland for good and they emigrated to Vancouver in Canada.

1:24:15Dominic Sandbrook:And in the meantime, the killing went on.

1:24:18Tom Holland:And Dominic, as you said, we will be returning to this story in due course. Still a long way to go before we reach the Good Friday Agreement. And there will as ever be more about this on this theme in our brilliant newsletter, which if you're not already signed up, you can get by signing up at therestishistory.com. Next week, we will be heading right back in time to ancient rome to the roman republic and two of its most famous names marius and sulla and if you feel there haven't been enough civil war on the podcast recently there will be rome's first civil war as marius and sulla start tearing chunks out of each other so all of that to come and if you want to hear the all four episodes of that right away on monday again you can sign up for them at the rest is history.com but for now dominic thank you for taking us through this uh this grim story and thank you everyone for listening bye-bye bye