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1:05

Hello and welcome to the Irish History Podcast.

1:07

My name is Finn Dewar. Now

1:10

54 years ago almost to the

1:12

day that this episode is released

1:15

the falls curfew saw the British

1:17

army besieged a large working-class neighborhood

1:19

in Belfast in what proved

1:21

to be pivotal events in the outbreak of the

1:23

troubles. The previous episodes

1:25

in this series explored how hundreds

1:28

were detained over those three days

1:30

and thousands were barricaded into their

1:32

homes. Four people Charles

1:35

Reneal, William Burns, Patrick Ellaman and

1:37

the focus of this series Sipigny

1:39

of Uglik were murdered by

1:41

soldiers of the British army over that

1:44

weekend as well. This podcast

1:46

the final in the series three

1:48

days in July reveals the dark

1:51

history and cover-up by the security

1:53

forces to mask what they had done

1:55

in the lower falls in July 1970. Through

1:58

this show I'm going to read Second

12:00

World War, which is covered in episode

12:02

1 of this series, would be weaponized

12:04

to mask the dark secrets about what

12:07

had happened in Belfast in early July

12:09

1970. Now

12:12

before we get into those specific rumours

12:14

and what is a very murky story,

12:16

I want to address one other claim

12:18

that has been something of a distraction

12:20

over the decades about why Zbigniew was

12:22

in Belfast. It has

12:24

been asserted by various people that Zbigniew

12:26

Uglik was actually a British agent in

12:28

the city. One of

12:31

the most notable advocates of this theory

12:33

was the journalist Tony Gertie, who made

12:35

the assertion in his book The Irish

12:37

War. However, even the

12:39

most cursory glance at Zbigniew's life

12:41

reveals it to be entirely implausible.

12:44

So Zbigniew Uglik was 21 when he

12:47

was killed in Belfast. He had been

12:49

working as a postman, his colleagues and

12:51

people on his mail round spoke

12:53

to journalists in the aftermath of his

12:55

debt testifying to the fact that he

12:57

had worked in Brentford Post Office. Now

13:00

prior to that he had been enrolled as

13:02

a student in Chiswick Polytechnic and before that

13:04

he had been in school. He

13:07

never had time to even join a security

13:09

agency, let alone gain the experience required before

13:11

he would be sent to somewhere like the

13:13

Lower Falls in July 1970. This

13:16

allegation entirely false only distracts

13:18

from a far more nefarious

13:21

and coordinated campaign that began

13:23

at Zbigniew's inquest, which we

13:25

will cover next. On

13:33

Wednesday, October 21st 1970, Zbigniew

13:35

Uglik's inquest took place at

13:37

the old Belfast courthouse located

13:40

on the Cromden Road in the city. The

13:43

inquest was supposed to set out a narrative

13:45

of what had happened, but

13:47

rather than shed light on Zbigniew's

13:49

story it just posed more questions

13:52

and obfuscated the truth. Those

13:55

who had interacted with Zbigniew in his

13:57

12 or so hours in Belfast testified

13:59

at the inquest. Andrew

14:01

Gray gave a detailed account of the

14:03

time Zabignev had spent in his house.

14:06

You've already heard extracts of

14:08

his testimony in Episode 2. Among

14:12

the most important witnesses and testimonies

14:14

was that of Private B, the

14:17

soldier who had fired the fatal

14:19

shot that killed Zabignev. The

14:21

written statement of Private B contained

14:23

numerous omissions and contradictions which would

14:25

prove very important in months and

14:27

years to come. For example,

14:30

he claimed, I removed the body

14:32

and took it to Albert Street, where it

14:34

was put aboard a military vehicle and I

14:37

accompanied it to the Royal Victoria Hospital. Private

14:40

B will conclude his statement for the

14:42

inquest with a deeply problematic description of

14:44

Zabignev's remains after they were recovered by

14:47

the British Army. The body was

14:49

wearing a black polo neck sweater and

14:51

dark trousers. The face

14:53

seemed camouflaged with black marks. This

14:56

was the first time the claim that

14:58

Zabignev's face had been camouflaged appeared in

15:00

the record. Andrew Gray,

15:03

for example, who had spent several hours with

15:05

Zabignev just prior to his death

15:07

made no mention of his face being

15:09

camouflaged. However, over the course

15:11

of the inquest, numerous other witnesses would

15:13

add to what was a heavily distorted

15:15

picture being painted about what exactly had

15:17

happened on the night Zabignev died. For

15:20

example, a soldier who met Zabignev at

15:22

Girdwood Barracks earlier on that Friday evening

15:25

would claim at his inquest that he

15:27

thought Zabignev was, in his words, a

15:29

young hothead and that there was something

15:31

phony about him. On

15:33

a weekend where hundreds of people, over

15:36

300 in fact, had been arrested in

15:38

Belfast, it's very difficult to

15:40

believe that a British Army soldier would

15:42

not have detained a man he

15:45

considered to be a hothead and to be

15:47

something of a phony. However,

15:49

some of the most controversial evidence

15:51

at the inquest was presented by

15:54

Dr. Richard Beavis, who had analysed

15:56

the swabs taken from Zabignev's hands.

16:00

Beavis found traces of lead on

16:02

Zabigniew's hands, and he would state

16:04

the following about these traces. As

16:07

a result of my investigation, I

16:09

think that it is more probable that the

16:12

deceased had discharged a firearm than handled a

16:14

lead object, as the traces of lead were

16:16

granular. The final

16:18

words of his statement are hard to

16:20

read. It probably says that

16:23

the traces of lead were granular and not

16:25

dusty, but in any case his meaning was

16:27

very clear. Beavis was claiming that

16:29

Zabigniew had fired a gun on the night

16:31

he had been killed. If

16:34

this claim were true, it would

16:36

obviously transform the case. However,

16:38

there's very little to back up Beavis'

16:40

claim. Firstly, it's worth noting

16:42

that he used the words I think

16:45

and it is probable, not exactly conclusive

16:47

language. Furthermore, Zabigniew, on

16:49

that same day, had first worked in

16:51

a post office in London delivering mail.

16:53

Then he had taken a flight to

16:55

Belfast. Then he had walked through what

16:57

was effectively an urban war zone, before

16:59

he had been shot. It was

17:01

also pointed out that as an amateur photographer he

17:04

would have been exposed to lead in cameras as

17:06

well, and earlier on the evening he

17:08

had been shot. As was covered in

17:10

episode 1, his camera had been opened and

17:12

the film removed. This could possibly

17:15

explain the presence of lead on his

17:17

hands. Perhaps even more

17:19

importantly though, Andrew Grey, one of the last

17:21

people to see him alive, never mentioned anything

17:23

about a weapon at all. Thirdly,

17:26

and perhaps most significantly, by the

17:28

Army's own admission, no weapon or

17:30

ammunition was found with or on

17:32

Zabigniew's body. So if he

17:34

had actually fired a weapon, where had he done

17:36

this, and when had he done it, and

17:39

exactly how had this young Londoner, who

17:41

had no connections to Belfast and only

17:43

arrived in the city less than 12

17:45

hours earlier, secured a weapon? In

17:48

my mind, this claim that he fired a gun

17:50

is just simply not plausible. But

17:52

what purpose did this narrative be painted, the

17:55

idea that Zabigniew was somehow guilty of something

17:57

serve? Well, it certainly reminded me of the

17:59

story of the Zbigniew's

20:00

body after his death, which had been

20:02

witnessed by the journalist Tony Gertie. Now

20:05

while the inquest had inferred that Zbigniew at

20:07

best had died through an accident and perhaps

20:10

was engaged in a gun battle with the

20:12

British Army, the inquest became

20:14

part of a very sinister, coordinated

20:16

campaign against the wider Oglick family.

20:19

When I spoke to Martha Riele Stern,

20:22

Zbigniew's niece, she revealed a particularly

20:24

harrowing experience that his parents faced

20:26

in the aftermath of his death

20:29

when they were visited by members of the

20:31

security forces. Martha was

20:33

a very young child during these events,

20:35

but as you'll hear, Zbigniew's death would

20:37

haunt her family for decades. She

20:40

now recalls what her grandparents endured in

20:42

the aftermath of their son's death and

20:45

how the security forces asked about him

20:47

in an accusatory way and wondered if

20:49

an Irish lodger who the family had

20:51

had somehow influenced him. They

20:55

had gentlemen come through

20:57

from either MI5

20:59

or Special Branch or whoever it was to

21:02

come and interview them with

21:05

specific questions around did

21:07

he have communist sympathies, who did

21:09

he know, who had

21:12

he spoken to and they

21:14

asked about the lodger as well.

21:17

So what connections did he have with

21:19

the Irish and obviously being Catholic, you

21:22

know, they're assuming his sympathies

21:24

lie with the Republicans. So

21:28

yeah, the interviews themselves

21:30

were very threatening. So

21:34

in terms of they were

21:36

set interviewed separately and quite

21:38

aggressively, that is what I

21:40

understood. The

21:43

solicitor that they

21:45

engaged to help them find

21:47

answers prior to the inquest,

21:50

he was threatened and he was

21:52

told don't rock the boat, don't ask any

21:54

more questions and he was told to recommend

21:56

to my grandparents not to take the matter

21:59

further. Christmas, 1970,

22:01

must have been an extremely difficult time

22:03

for the Uglik family. Salomea and Pavow

22:05

had endured so much in their lives,

22:08

and when they had brought their family

22:10

to Britain, they presumably hoped that they

22:12

would find protection and peace there. But

22:14

in July, Zbigniew had been gunned down

22:17

by soldiers from the very army Pavow

22:19

had fought for in the Second World

22:21

War. However, even though Zbigniew

22:23

was dead, the family would not be

22:25

allowed to grieve in peace. Over

22:28

a year after his death, in later 1971, the

22:30

security forces would

22:33

inflict further trauma on the Uglik

22:35

family by using Zbigniew in black

22:37

propaganda. In what

22:39

is a dark twist to this

22:41

story, Zbigniew's memory would be used

22:44

in psychological operations, sometimes known as

22:46

PSYOPS, during the unfolding conflict in

22:48

the north, which we'll cover next.

22:56

Over a year after Zbigniew had

22:58

been killed, his story began to

23:00

reappear in several publications, but

23:02

some details have been changed

23:04

intentionally. The first publication to

23:06

carry this new version of

23:09

events was the People newspaper,

23:11

which ran a story under

23:13

the headline, Russians Backed IRAMN.

23:16

The article beneath this headline went on

23:18

to detail supposed Russian plans to discredit

23:20

Britain in the eyes of the world

23:22

by fermenting unrest in Northern Ireland. The

23:25

article also claimed that this was a plan

23:27

to keep NATO troops pinned down in Northern

23:30

Ireland so they couldn't be used elsewhere. In

23:32

a pretty ludicrous narrative, it also claimed

23:35

that British Communists were being sent to

23:37

Northern Ireland to train the IRA. In

23:40

an attempt to prove this claim,

23:42

Zbigniew was used as evidence as

23:44

links between the Soviet Union and

23:46

the IRA. The following is

23:48

an excerpt from the article in the People.

23:51

Although his name is written incorrectly, his surname

23:53

comes first, then his first name, this is

23:55

the way it appeared in the original story.

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or sleepnumber.com. he

34:00

set about building things with media

34:02

outlets and using his connections within

34:04

the intelligence community began to plant

34:06

stories which focused on supposed communist

34:08

connections in the IRA. Within

34:11

three and a half months in Belfast he

34:13

was reporting back to London that he was

34:15

enjoying a degree of success that he had

34:17

not anticipated. One example he cited was an

34:19

article that appeared in the Belfast newsletter on

34:21

September 21st 1971 called Red Menace is Real

34:23

in Ulster riots. Significantly

34:29

this was around the same time that

34:31

the article in the British newspaper The

34:33

People that attacked Zbigniew Vughlick's memory had

34:36

first appeared. Indeed in

34:38

terms of the stories that sullied Zbigniew's

34:40

memory Hugh Mooney's report to his superiors

34:42

in the Foreign Office in the autumn

34:44

of 1971 would be very clear when

34:46

he said, I

34:50

am also in touch with John Rooks editor

34:52

of the Belfast Telegraph who should

34:54

publish a piece shortly giving the long-established

34:57

communist links of certain key members of

34:59

the IRA. I also

35:01

steered Mr Rooks to the head of

35:03

the special branch to make inquiries about

35:05

the increased activity of the Northern Ireland

35:07

Communist Party. He would

35:09

conclude, there is tremendous scope for

35:11

much more of this kind of work. Now

35:14

the timing of this report was critical. It

35:17

covered work between June and September and

35:19

it was presumably written in the last

35:21

days of September or early October 1971.

35:25

Less than two weeks later on the 12th to the 14th of October 1971

35:27

John Rooks, the editor of the

35:31

Belfast Telegraph, the same individual that

35:33

Hugh Mooney had mentioned in his

35:35

report, published three articles on the

35:37

communist links to the IRA. The

35:40

third and final of these articles

35:42

would make spurious allegations against Zbigniew

35:44

Vughlick. It essentially claimed that he

35:46

was the embodiment of the link between the Soviet

35:48

Union and the IRA. It seems

35:51

very likely that Hugh Mooney was the one

35:53

who provided these details to John Rooks, the

35:55

editor of the Belfast Telegraph. It

35:58

could also have been the special branch Martin

38:00

Riele Stern revealed the family's background,

38:02

their experiences of the Second World

38:04

War, their incarceration in Siberia, and

38:07

then their remarkable odyssey to Britain.

38:10

This infused Zbigniew's parents, Pavao and

38:12

Salomea, with an intense opposition to

38:14

communism and the Soviet Union in

38:16

Russia. They were

38:18

outraged by these claims about Zbigniew,

38:21

and Zbigniew's father, Pavao, would actually

38:23

write to the People newspaper the

38:25

first publication to run the story

38:27

asking for a correction. May

38:30

I point out that my son,

38:32

Zbigniew, was not a communist working

38:35

as an IRA sniper, and

38:37

was not carrying a gun when he

38:39

was shot and killed. Like

38:42

many other Poles, my wife and

38:44

I suffered graviously at the hands

38:46

of the Russians, and we are

38:48

grateful for the refuge accorded to

38:50

us in England. Our

38:53

son, British-born, shared our

38:55

views of the communists. It

38:58

is clear from the inquest evidence

39:00

that in visiting Belfast my son

39:02

was living out of a fantasy.

39:05

The imputation in your report that

39:07

he was a communist has pained

39:09

both his mother and me, and

39:12

in addition given rise

39:14

to unfortunate comment among

39:17

neighbours and workmates. Pavao's

39:19

letter highlighted the pain and anguish that

39:22

the campaign that used Zbigniew to try

39:24

and concoct false narratives about what was

39:26

happening in Belfast in the 70s had

39:29

on the Uglik family. From

39:31

a distance of 54 years, the experience

39:34

of the Uglik family can seem

39:36

strange and unusual, even unique in

39:38

terms of the troubles. Zbigniew's

39:41

story is often depicted as an odd

39:43

anecdote to the wider history of the

39:45

conflict. He was a young

39:47

Londoner, sometimes even called Polish, who had wandered

39:49

into Belfast in 1970 and

39:52

was shot dead a few hours later. However,

39:54

his story and what happened

39:56

to the Uglik family afterwards

39:58

wasn't unusual. The murder

40:01

of Zbigniew Uglik and then the treatment

40:03

of his family was an early example

40:05

of how the security forces would treat

40:07

victims and their families during the

40:09

troubles. In Derry a few

40:12

months after the smear campaign against

40:14

Zbigniew Uglik's memory, the British army

40:16

killed 13 people on what is

40:18

known as Bloody Sunday. Hugh

40:20

Mooney was one of those drafted in

40:22

to craft the army's response to the

40:24

massacre, where they would try to depict

40:27

the victims as having been armed volunteers engaged

40:29

in a gun battle. It would

40:31

take nearly five decades of relentless campaigning

40:33

by the families of the Bloody Sunday

40:35

victims before a public inquiry would confirm

40:37

this to be a lie. In

40:40

researching this story, one thing

40:43

that stood out to me was how

40:45

the psychological operations and black propaganda worked.

40:47

I think we all have images of

40:50

evil villains or almost James Bond type

40:52

characters that work behind the scenes arranging

40:54

these stories. However, this distorts

40:56

the reality of the people behind these

40:59

campaigns. Hugh Mooney, from what I

41:01

can gather, was a very ordinary person. He

41:03

was not a soldier, he worked in an

41:05

office in Hillsborough Castle, and he may

41:07

never even have fired a gun. When he

41:09

died in 2017, an online obituary

41:11

described him in the following terms,

41:14

journalist, diplomat, barrister, teacher,

41:16

and writer. It all

41:18

sounds terribly respectable. The

41:21

term diplomat probably refers to his

41:23

career in the Foreign Office Information

41:25

Research Department. But the

41:27

campaign, Hugh Mooney orchestrated, damaged

41:29

lives, lives of innocent people,

41:32

and the Uglic family in London were one of them.

41:35

I said earlier that the campaign orchestrated in

41:37

the media was not about Zabigniew at all,

41:40

and when I said this I'm not trying to write him

41:42

out of his own history, but it struck

41:44

me that people like Hugh Mooney didn't

41:47

care about the impact they had on

41:49

the Uglic family or Zabigniew's memory. The

41:51

documents which I have relied on in this

41:54

podcast in which Hugh Mooney reported back to

41:56

London about how he planted the story of

41:58

Russian involvement was actually highlighted in

42:00

the Bloody Sunday inquiry by Hugh

42:03

Mooney himself. I suspect

42:05

he would have scarcely even remembered

42:07

who Zbigniew was or gave second

42:09

thought to weaponizing the memory, history,

42:11

and experiences of his family against

42:13

them. But these campaigns,

42:15

as I say, caused terrible distress and

42:18

pain for a family who were

42:20

grieving. When I spoke to Martha

42:22

Riele Stern, she spoke about how Zbigniew's

42:24

father, Pavow, would have felt about the

42:26

Soviet Union and what the claims that

42:28

his son was a communist would have

42:30

meant to him. Because it was

42:33

under communists that his

42:35

people, as far as he was concerned, had suffered

42:38

the most, that they had

42:40

caused or they

42:42

had committed such atrocities like cutting

42:44

and all of those places where

42:47

tens of thousands of Polish officers

42:49

were murdered. He was extremely

42:52

anti-communism. You

42:55

wouldn't even believe how anti- He

42:59

never spoke Russian.

43:03

Again, not even if my

43:05

granny was being a bit of a showoff

43:08

and telling us what this was or that was in

43:10

Russian, he would never. He said, I'm not going to

43:12

speak that language. I

43:15

don't want to hear it in this house. He

43:18

was very anti-communism, anti-communist,

43:21

anti-socialist, anti- you

43:24

know, quite frankly, had he been allowed to

43:26

vote, he'd be a conservative. That's

43:31

why it was so upsetting, Finn, I think, that

43:34

they had accused him of being, and as

43:36

far as my grandfather

43:39

was concerned, that he had fought the

43:42

fascists and the communists. And

43:44

what the hell did he fight it for? How

43:46

could they say such a horrible thing about his son?

43:48

That was the While

43:51

the Uglicks were bewildered and traumatized by

43:53

what had happened across the north of

43:55

Ireland, the Falls curfew would, over

43:57

time, just become one of a serious- in

44:00

a catalogue of incidents as the list

44:02

of victims in the troubles mounted. Trauma

44:05

was layered upon trauma. However,

44:07

for the Ugluk family it was obviously

44:09

the events of those three days in

44:11

July which remained central to their lives.

44:15

Martha recalls how visiting Zbigniews grave

44:17

was a feature of family life

44:19

and also how Zbigniews loss was

44:22

remembered by wider Polish society in

44:24

London. He was a Catholic

44:26

so obviously there would be anniversary

44:28

masses and then at All Souls

44:31

you then go and you prepare the

44:33

grave, you tidy it up and then

44:35

your lyrical parish priest, your Polish parish

44:37

priest would

44:39

come and then he'd say a prayer over

44:41

the grave and that would happen every year

44:44

but they would go regularly to tidy

44:46

up the grave. They would visit him and remember him

44:49

and say a little prayer. As you

44:51

said there would be remembrance masses. He

44:53

was very popular you see. He was

44:56

very involved with the Polish Scouting Association

44:58

and I don't

45:02

know how to stress but it is in

45:05

London and in Birmingham and wherever

45:07

these Polish communities, post-war Polish communities

45:10

were, these Polish Scouting Associations

45:12

were like a hub of where

45:14

all the young people would meet

45:16

and from there they would have

45:18

youth groups and they'd have dances

45:20

and they would have, it was

45:22

like this separate

45:25

world within a

45:27

general sort of, within London and

45:29

he was a scout leader and he

45:32

was very popular and for years somebody

45:34

used to leave white roses on

45:36

his grave but we would find

45:39

them but nobody knows who it was. However

45:41

the gap in family life left

45:44

by Zbigniews murder remained their entire

45:46

lives. Pavo and Salomea passed

45:48

away in 2005 within 10 days

45:52

of each other. Salomea first

45:54

then Pavo. Here

45:56

Martha talks about how when Salomea

45:58

suffered from dementia In her

46:01

later years, this often left her reliving

46:03

the trauma of not knowing what happened

46:05

to Zabignev and the fact she had

46:07

not seen Zabignev's body after he had

46:09

been killed. Because obviously then you relive

46:11

certain past things quite clearly and yes,

46:14

nobody would tell her what had happened

46:16

to her son and she wasn't allowed

46:18

to see him. Even

46:21

though Martha was only a child when these events

46:23

took place, it had a profound impact on her

46:25

throughout her life. She was

46:27

intimidated to such an extent that even

46:30

today she still has reservations about making

46:32

enquiries about what happened to Zabignev. My

46:35

dad before he passed was saying,

46:37

you try and find out, see what you

46:39

can find out, but be careful. You

46:42

know, and if you hear that, I mean, can you

46:44

imagine hearing that most of your life? And

46:46

there's nothing to be afraid of. And

46:50

yet, looking at it, just

46:53

as still, I can't get the courage

46:56

to make a freedom

46:59

of information request for a

47:01

copy of the coroner's report,

47:03

the full report to which, as

47:06

a member of the family, I should

47:08

be able to get hold of

47:10

or just some sort of

47:12

copy of what this whole interview was

47:15

about and why. I still

47:17

can't do that. In the back of

47:19

my head are all the warnings. And

47:21

it really was growing up with this sense of

47:24

we don't tell other people about it. We

47:26

don't talk about it. We don't want any

47:28

trouble. And that's what it was. But

47:31

nobody would give them answers and nobody's ever going

47:33

to give them answers. And that was literally what

47:35

was said. They were foreigners.

47:37

We don't matter. And

47:39

they're not going to give us answers. It's

47:42

horrible, but it was very conflicting because I just

47:44

assumed until I found out to

47:47

the contrary that he'd been shot by

47:49

an IRA sniper. there

48:00

were few in London that would have been able

48:02

to relate to their experience. However,

48:04

unknown to the family, Zbigniew was

48:06

remembered by others. Although

48:09

little was known about him in

48:11

Belfast, the community remembered the young

48:13

Londoner each year when they recalled

48:15

the Falls curfew of July 1970.

48:17

When a plaque recalling those events was

48:20

erected on the Falls Road in Belfast,

48:22

it listed the four people killed, including

48:24

Zbigniew, with the words, murdered

48:26

by the British Army during the

48:28

Falls curfew of July 3rd to 5th 1970. The curfew

48:31

was finally

48:33

broken by the courage and determination

48:35

of the women of Belfast. When

48:38

Meredith discovered that Zbigniew was remembered in

48:41

Belfast, it had a huge impact on

48:43

her. I'm just so pleased that all

48:46

those people remembered him and there were

48:48

masses and people lit candles and

48:50

I came across a sort of a Facebook

48:53

remembrance site and he happened to be on

48:55

there. Then they were remembering, I

48:57

think it was the 4th of July and they were

48:59

happened to have remember him

49:01

on that particular day.

49:04

And I think if my grandparents had known

49:06

this, or

49:08

if I had started looking sooner, then

49:10

maybe I could have said, or at

49:13

least could have said to them, look, he's

49:15

not forgotten, not in Ireland. People

49:17

have remembered him in Ireland. When

49:20

we spoke, I asked Martha what she would

49:22

like to see happen now. I

49:25

would like his

49:27

death certificate to reflect

49:29

the true course of death, not

49:31

death by misadventure, but

49:34

unlawful killing. And I would

49:37

like to know who

49:39

the gentleman was who took that shot,

49:42

just to be able to ask. He's

49:44

probably passed away. To ask

49:47

him, well, why did you,

49:49

why? Why were you so frightened? What

49:53

was it? And

49:55

just for someone to tell the truth for a change, that

49:58

would be quite nice. And just to...

50:00

give this information freely because I was

50:02

pretty sure that each

50:05

of the deaths

50:08

starting back in 1968-69 was to be

50:10

reopened, re-examined and I'm pretty sure that

50:13

they would have looked

50:19

at Spish-X1 because it was one of the

50:21

earlier deaths at that time, wasn't it? But

50:24

I don't even know whether they even got to looking

50:27

at that or reviewing that case. Ultimately

50:30

that's what I would like. I would like because

50:34

the death certificate is a legal document,

50:36

it's a historical document and it should tell me

50:38

the truth. I

50:40

don't think we're really ever going to find out why

50:43

they decided to cover it up or why

50:45

they weren't honest or what was so terrible

50:47

about being honest about it and saying he

50:49

was shot by accident by someone who

50:52

was too young to be there or who had

50:54

been geed up by some senior officer.

50:56

But he was so

51:01

close to the edge of that zone.

51:04

He just needed to go from

51:06

Albert Street, is it to cross to the cathedral and

51:08

then he was out of the zone? To

51:10

finish the episode and this series I

51:13

want to return to Belfast one final

51:15

time because Zabigniew's story is interwoven with

51:17

the city, its history and the trauma

51:20

it has endured in the later 20th

51:22

century and indeed before. Sadly

51:24

his story is not unique in

51:26

Belfast. The Bally Murphy Massacre and

51:28

Bloody Sunday are perhaps two better

51:30

known instances where victims of state

51:33

violence were then in various ways

51:35

blamed for their own murders. When

51:37

I visited Belfast to record pieces

51:39

for this series, the writer and

51:41

journalist Podrzegor Meskal, who you've heard

51:43

from throughout the series, brought me

51:45

to a place called Percy Street.

51:48

We talked about the history of this street

51:50

in episode 1. 54 years ago mobs from

51:54

the loyalist Shankill Road poured

51:56

down Percy Street onto the

51:58

Falls Road, burning high houses

52:00

and attacking a school, St. Congles.

52:03

But while we stood there in the 2020s, Podrick spoke

52:06

about the legacy of the conflict in Belfast.

52:09

Percy Street has now what is called a

52:12

peace wall, a huge wall

52:14

that divides the street in two,

52:16

separating the loyalist Shankill Road from

52:18

the nationalist Falls Road. As

52:20

Podrick looked at the wall, he explained

52:23

the legacy of the conflict in these

52:25

powerful words. We live

52:27

parallel existences in this city

52:29

and it's not a big city, but

52:32

people who, including myself, who live in

52:34

it, will live

52:36

in existence, which maybe means

52:39

that half of that, you don't have

52:42

a life within half of it because

52:45

there are no family members there. You

52:47

don't play sport there, you don't socialise there.

52:50

And that's still the reality. That's the reality of Belfast

52:52

in 2023. And

52:56

to finish, Podrick returned to the Falls

52:58

curfew and summed up the injustice at

53:00

the heart of this story, when a

53:02

state which claimed it was there

53:04

to protect its citizens, murdered civilians, then

53:06

lied about what it had done, and

53:08

in the case of Zbigniew, used

53:11

him to cover up for their crimes. Podrick

53:13

detailed this and explained what a

53:15

step towards some sense of justice would be.

53:19

The state which claims the right to protect you murders

53:21

you. And they can't just

53:23

walk away and say, yes, we did

53:25

this because then the whole narrative

53:27

of Podrick implodes.

53:31

So they have to also engage in the valence of words

53:33

and the valence of narrative in the sense of, well, we

53:35

did this because of A, B and C. I mean,

53:38

this person was suspect and we

53:40

needed to put an end to this person.

53:43

Or else this person shouldn't have been when they were at

53:45

that time, even if it was their own straight, but they

53:47

lived their own life, their whole life. And

53:49

this is what happened with the four victims of the curfew.

53:51

And so whenever the

53:53

inquest were heard later in

53:55

1970, the term misadventure was put against all

53:59

their names. and misadventures like if it's

54:01

a quaint Victorian legal term for your

54:04

demise is your own fault, if your own fault you were killed.

54:07

And so for the last 50 years

54:09

the families of these four civilians

54:12

have been laboring under that whatever

54:15

their attitude to the British state and the British

54:17

government the record still states that the

54:19

defeat were killed because it was their own fault

54:21

and so one of the

54:24

sort of few legal avenues that's been opened

54:26

to them is to tentatively

54:28

explore the idea of getting those in quest for it

54:30

so we're turned but it wasn't their own fault that

54:32

they were killed they never had to be in their

54:34

own strait and in their own country

54:37

at that time. Now

54:39

on Monday the 18th of September 2023 the Conservative government

54:41

in London

54:43

passed the Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy

54:45

and Reconciliation Bill. This

54:48

was condemned internationally by victims and

54:50

support groups as it effectively shut

54:52

down the possibility to reopen in

54:54

quests such as Zabigniew's. Now

54:57

this episode is being released just as

54:59

the UK goes to the polls in

55:01

an election on July 4th 2024. This

55:04

is predicted to usher in a Labour government

55:07

who have pledged to overturn this legacy

55:09

bill. Time will tell whether they

55:11

honor this promise but if they do this

55:13

would open the possibility that Zabigniew's case

55:15

could be re-looked at again. Over

55:21

the last three episodes you've been listening to

55:23

Three Days in July, written,

55:25

researched and narrated by myself Finn

55:28

Dewar. A special thanks to

55:30

Martha Rie-Lestern for sharing her family

55:32

history and Podrick O'Meshkal upon

55:35

whose original research for a book he's

55:37

writing on the Falls curfew the series

55:39

was based. You can find links and

55:41

contact details for Podrick in the show

55:43

notes below. I'll be

55:45

back on Saturday with a bonus

55:47

episode on something completely different. Until

55:50

then, Sloane. This

56:43

is Christopher Kimball from Milk Street Radio. Our

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