0:00

K-12 education looks

0:02

different than it once did. Students

0:04

deserve a safe, nurturing environment

0:06

where they can learn and grow. With

0:08

Ohio Virtual Academy, students in grades K-12

0:11

have access to quality online public

0:13

education at no cost, including

0:16

CareerTech programs and College Credit

0:18

Plus courses. Support your

0:20

students' success by enrolling them in Ohio

0:22

Virtual Academy at k12.com

0:25

slash educate. That's k12.com

0:28

slash educate.

0:29

Have you ever been to therapy and felt like you

0:32

just weren't connecting with your therapist? It

0:34

happens. What's important is what you

0:36

do next. I'm Dr. Doug Newton,

0:38

Chief Medical Officer at Sondermein, an in-person

0:41

and virtual provider of mental health care. At

0:44

Sondermein, we connect you with the clinician

0:46

that's right for you. And my team provides

0:48

professional guidance to ensure that you

0:50

receive the best possible care.

0:52

Therapy is hard. Finding the right therapist

0:55

shouldn't be. Visit Sondermein.com

0:57

and schedule a session in less than 10 minutes. Therapy

1:00

works. Hi, folks.

1:03

Before we get into this episode, I want to talk

1:05

about the UK True Crime podcast. It's

1:07

a podcast which focuses on the lesser-known crimes

1:10

that have taken place primarily in the UK, and

1:12

it offers new perspectives and insights into

1:15

the stories you may already know. It's

1:17

hosted by Adam, and if you like the style of the Troubles

1:19

podcast, then this one is for you, with

1:21

his delivery being direct and straight to the point. With

1:25

a library of over 300 episodes, there are plenty

1:27

to check out. He has some episodes related

1:29

to the Troubles as well. You can listen

1:31

by searching UK True Crime podcast wherever

1:34

you get your podcasts. Now,

1:36

let's get into it. Troubles

1:40

Podcast

1:53

This is the Troubles podcast, a podcast about

1:55

the violence and bloodshed that occurred in Northern Ireland, the

1:57

Republic of Ireland and Great Britain.

1:59

multiple sides and organisations waged

2:02

a bloody conflict over the status of Northern Ireland.

2:08

This week's episode of the podcast features my interview

2:10

with Geroge O'Foyleon. He

2:12

did his PhD at the University of Limerick under

2:15

Dr Ruyn O'Donnell, looking at Irish

2:17

republicanism in the south during the Troubles. He

2:20

works in academic publishing and is currently living in

2:22

Belfast. Geroge

2:25

has just released a second book in his series focusing

2:27

on the provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland.

2:30

We had a fascinating chat about the IRA's

2:32

fertiliser bombs, conditions in Port Leech

2:35

prison and whether the Irish government was

2:37

doing enough to tackle republicanism in Ireland.

2:41

So let's get into it then.

2:43

We began our chat with Geroge telling me a little bit about

2:45

himself.

2:47

So I am from Shannon

2:50

County Clare and I think this

2:52

used to be quite well known but I think it's not

2:54

now but in the 70s the huge

2:56

northern population in Shannon,

2:58

kind of an anomaly you know like a lot of people

3:00

who left the north during the

3:03

outbreak of the Troubles they went to Dundalk, Monneton,

3:06

Donegal and so on. But quite

3:08

a lot of people came down to Shannon because it was a planned

3:11

town, it was a new town in the 60s. Yeah the new

3:13

town in Ireland I think yeah. That's it yeah a

3:15

lot of jobs there and I

3:17

think in the early 70s nearly 25% of the

3:19

population was from the north.

3:21

So it's a massive massive and really in an

3:23

you know like an island and you know kind of

3:25

surrounded by you

3:26

know typically you know towns and villages

3:28

where no one really leaves or you know there's no outsiders

3:31

and so on. But

3:33

my mother is from Belfast herself.

3:36

When I was then doing my bachelor degree

3:38

in history in Mary I was looking

3:41

at that you know the kind of push and pull factors. Obviously

3:43

we all know the push factors for leaving the north

3:46

but what were the pull ones and how people ended up

3:48

down here.

3:49

And I was interviewing people I was doing it kind of an oral

3:51

history take on it

3:53

and just over the course of that you

3:55

know it was 20, 21 at the

3:57

time kind of thought I knew you know

3:59

the Troubles.

3:59

new by town and suddenly

4:02

you're getting all these stories you know because they're talking

4:04

about oh and such and such stayed with us you know

4:06

when they were on the run or before they got a

4:08

flight to America and

4:09

you're hearing all this stuff that you know

4:12

I never knew about. You know really like about

4:14

the South about safe houses, training

4:16

camps and then and I just got

4:19

fascinated about that you know I finished finished

4:21

up with Mary I

4:23

and went on to do a PhD in UL

4:25

on the South because it just

4:28

you know even like when you read books like that the kind

4:30

of big books Tim Paekougan's book on the troubles

4:32

of the IRA the big general books

4:34

and general histories they don't talk about this kind

4:37

of stuff don't talk about

4:38

you might mention literally a sentence in the entire. Yeah

4:40

the Republic will probably get a paragraph in a couple

4:42

of chapters maybe yeah. Yeah exactly and

4:44

they're not going into that kind of stuff training

4:47

obviously every single person man and woman who

4:49

joined the IRA and the INLA

4:51

and turned 70s 80s 90s had

4:54

to do a training camp every training camp was

4:56

in the South you're talking about thousands of people

4:58

did training and you know just the numbers

5:00

are

5:01

huge and so the things like that really

5:03

really

5:04

hooked me and so yeah I ended up doing

5:06

this PhD took it as well as a bit of an oral

5:08

history because now

5:09

it was it was a bit bad timing because

5:11

the Boston College kind of debacle with the

5:14

with the oral history there

5:16

was breaking out at the time I was doing it so some

5:18

people were reluctant to speak but you know

5:20

I mean a lot of people even in the time that I was

5:23

doing it a lot of people who would have been involved in the

5:25

South in the 70s would have been an older generation

5:28

you

5:28

know they would have been involved in the 50s for example

5:30

so they were they were dying and you know each each

5:32

person that died without leaving an account that

5:35

just the history that's lost the value to future generations

5:38

so I was trying to trying to just capture all that at

5:40

the time. Okay

5:42

and specifically so your PhD was and

5:44

the IRA in the Republic of Ireland. Yeah

5:47

it was exactly that it was it was the IRA

5:49

in the South I went up to 86 because

5:51

it was a neat split you know the split in the movement

5:53

in 86 when they voted to recognize Leinster

5:55

Hallistaller

5:57

and so that was a kind of a neat thing but I mean the

5:59

people I spoke to

5:59

they were talking about the 90s, actually supervised

6:02

the rain unions like this is turning into journalism,

6:04

not history, you know, it's getting a bit too recent.

6:06

It's a fine line. Yeah. And I think as well,

6:08

you know, just like we were speaking

6:11

before the recording about the legacy cases and,

6:13

you know,

6:14

people can obviously that that can

6:16

still happen. You can still be prosecutors or statute of

6:18

limitations.

6:19

I think people in the South or more were wary about

6:21

that because even

6:23

though there has been, you know, post post

6:25

ceasefire prosecutions in Swan in the North,

6:27

there is a bit of a

6:28

sort of understanding that it was almost an amnesty.

6:31

I mean, it was the official secret amnesty letters, but

6:33

also that, you know,

6:34

people are a bit more open to talk in the North, whereas

6:36

in the South,

6:37

it was never anything like that, you know, so I think

6:39

people are still much more wary

6:42

to talk about what happened in the South. Yeah,

6:44

I guess they don't want to expose themselves.

6:46

So your first book then came out in 2019, I

6:48

know, specifically was it 1969, 79?

6:52

Yeah, I kind of like it says 80 on the title,

6:55

but I didn't go into 80 really, you

6:57

know, it was just it

6:59

was just kind of a neat,

7:01

more of a kind of a stylistic reason

7:03

to have it as 80. But, you know, the second

7:05

book really takes off and goes into 80 in detail.

7:08

But yeah, I mean, like, you know, after

7:10

after the PhD,

7:11

I worked, you know, like in a non non

7:14

academia field, I was just working away and went

7:16

back and kind of

7:18

did it. And I decided to break it up and

7:20

do it because, you know, the thesis

7:22

was obviously pretty detailed, but I wanted to go into

7:24

more detail and expand out

7:27

certain things, you know, and kind of make it a bit

7:29

more,

7:29

more of a narrative, basically. So break

7:32

it up into different decades. But

7:34

was there a reason you kind of decided to

7:37

release these two volumes? No,

7:39

to be honest, it was really, you know, I

7:41

mean, the troubles being 30 years, it just

7:43

kind of made sense to break it up into into three

7:45

decades. There was no, you know, I mean,

7:48

there was nothing significant that really happened at the end

7:50

of 79 to the breakup. It was actually

7:53

just to have it as you know, well, if I'm going to do kind

7:55

of several volumes, I might

7:58

as well break it up there, say, because, you know,

7:59

otherwise you're kind of looking for, you know, you

8:02

could do it in a way of like, okay, I'll end at the hunger

8:04

strikes, or you know, I'll end that, the kind of reorganization

8:07

of the IRA in 75, 76. But

8:09

no, I think it was just, it was

8:11

just really, you

8:12

know, doing a by decade.

8:15

We then got straight into it. And I asked

8:18

Geroge if he believed that the Irish government

8:20

did enough during the troubles to curtail

8:22

the rise of republicanism and paramilitaries.

8:28

The short answer, yes, I think they did.

8:31

You know, and I can expand on that. I

8:33

think there's

8:35

a lot an awful lot they can be criticized

8:37

for on both sides, you know, you can say, well, they didn't

8:40

do enough to do x or y, or you

8:42

could say, well, they curtail civil liberties

8:44

to an alarming extent, you know, in a way

8:46

that we've never actually got back, you know, it's, and

8:48

so I think that they can be criticized on both

8:51

sides a lot.

8:52

But they had to walk a very, very,

8:55

you know, tight rope,

8:58

and throughout the conflict.

9:00

Because, you know, on the one side, you had unionists

9:03

and nor and the British are breeding down their

9:05

necks about issues like extradition, which they didn't

9:07

do until, you know, nearly 15 years

9:09

into the conflict, or

9:11

actually 15 years into the conflict, you know,

9:14

and they didn't, you

9:16

know, they were giving more lenient sentences, things

9:18

like this, there was a lot of criticisms like that. But

9:20

at the same time,

9:22

people in the south,

9:23

and you saw this when extradition actually happened, it

9:26

was one of the few things that could really

9:28

kind of galvanize the population of the

9:30

south in opposition to your

9:32

in support, let's say, of republicanism

9:35

in a way that only something like massively

9:37

impactful and kind of time specific like Congress

9:39

writes a bloody Sunday could do, like people

9:42

were willing to put up with a lot of, you

9:44

know, things like special criminal court, jury list courts,

9:47

you know, people going to jail just

9:49

on the word of a superintendent, but other than the evidence being

9:51

proffered, people were willing to put up with that kind

9:53

of stuff. But there was a it was always a line

9:55

that they would not put up with anymore, you know,

9:57

and extradition was one for in

10:00

a decade. And so the government, successive

10:02

governments, I think, walked,

10:05

you know, and successfully walked that tightrope,

10:08

that they didn't, you know, they didn't

10:11

go too far in terms of,

10:14

let's say,

10:16

being lenient to Republicans.

10:18

And at the same time, they didn't go so far

10:21

as to kind of turn the state into

10:23

the type of state that the North was at the time, you know,

10:26

in terms of the containment of civil liberties.

10:29

As I had recently covered an episode on Frank Stagg

10:31

this season, we began talking about how the

10:34

Irish government handles the funerals of the early

10:36

hunger strikers.

10:39

The thing about that, right, you know, you look

10:41

at the kind of procession that happened in 74 for

10:44

Michael Balgan and that kind of crossed the country. But

10:46

did it change anything?

10:48

You know, it's like,

10:49

could they not just have let that happen? Because

10:52

it's not

10:53

changing anything. At the end of the day, the people who were going to come

10:55

out,

10:57

like, I think, I agree,

10:59

I think they handled it very

11:01

badly. And

11:02

they actually probably caused more

11:05

people to turn, you know, against the

11:07

government and towards the populism by the way they handle

11:09

it, then if they just let it happen, it would have looked bad,

11:11

would look very bad optics.

11:13

But

11:14

I think that, you know, after a week,

11:16

would that not have just died down again?

11:18

I guess it was probably their relationship

11:20

with the British government. British government were probably saying,

11:22

you know, for like the likes of Paisley up in Northwood, you know, be like,

11:25

well, they're there, look at this, they're allowing this. And

11:27

so, you know, and handed basically the area great

11:30

propaganda cue,

11:31

you know, afterwards when they, when they reinterred

11:33

the body, right?

11:37

One such example of the Irish government trying

11:39

to take action against Republicans was the introduction

11:42

of the Special Criminal Court in 1972. I ask

11:44

Eiraj why this came about.

11:50

Yeah, so what had happened was up

11:52

until, let's say from 70, 71, and then into May 72,

11:57

you know, the troubles, well, they were well kicked

11:59

off by 72.

11:59

too, but there was stuff happening in the South,

12:02

training camps and weapons and, you

12:04

know, jell-ignite stores being raided and quarries

12:06

and things like this.

12:07

And so people were, you know,

12:09

with increasing regularity, people were

12:12

appearing in court in the South, in

12:14

which every county in the South for IRA activity,

12:17

but they were appearing in district courts

12:19

because that was the way it was run.

12:21

And my membership at the time, I think,

12:23

was six years. It was quickly brought up

12:25

to two years later in the 70s. It was brought up to

12:27

seven years. But

12:30

in those years, in 70, 71, early 72, when they were appearing

12:32

in, you know, and you can

12:35

find this in the newspapers and I give quite a few

12:38

examples in them in the first book, when they

12:40

were appearing in court, these people, they were often

12:42

being acquitted by judges for, you

12:44

know, a lack of evidence or various

12:46

things.

12:47

And

12:49

often, you know, particularly in Loud

12:51

and in Monaghan and in Donegal, the

12:53

judges would go up afterwards and shake their hand

12:56

or the juries would cheer and line

12:58

up to shake their hand afterwards.

13:00

So you know, the point is, is that

13:02

when the special criminal court was introduced, it

13:04

wasn't because there

13:06

was jury intimidation. There was one single

13:08

case of jury intimidation in the three years up

13:10

to that introduction, but there was numerous

13:12

cases of juries and judges

13:15

just acquitting people and afterwards congratulating

13:18

them. So you know, the introduction

13:21

of it, you know, as I say, the constitution

13:23

actually had it that they had to prove that they had failed

13:25

due to intimidation and, you know,

13:28

that we couldn't get juries because people were too afraid.

13:30

Whereas it was actually the opposite way around. And they were challenged

13:33

by Noel Brown, who was a TD at the time and another

13:35

TD to provide the evidence for

13:37

the introduction. And they just, they just barreled

13:39

through and just passed it. What actually

13:41

happened was Jack Lynch, who was Taoiseach at

13:43

the time, was pressured by the British government. The

13:46

embassy, the British ambassador provided

13:48

Jack Lynch with a list of judges that he

13:50

had gotten from looking at newspaper reports and said,

13:53

these people are too in favour of the IRA.

13:55

Now, you know, we can't draw an exact line because

13:57

we don't know what private conversations took place after.

14:00

that you know that it was the British to force

14:02

him but that is the fact that he was presented with

14:04

this list of judges

14:06

and subsequently um

14:08

the the special criminal court was introduced and as you

14:10

say it was emergency legislation which is why it has to be

14:12

renewed every single year to the present.

14:15

Yeah I didn't know that at all fascinating very

14:17

interesting and I guess again this is this was

14:19

introduced early 70s so there still would have been a lot of

14:21

um

14:22

sympathy for the IRA I guess this was before some

14:25

of the larger bombings that would kind of change the public

14:27

opinion you know. Yeah yeah I

14:29

mean it was basically um

14:31

it came on up until like

14:34

pre pre bloody Friday let's say which would have been you

14:36

know the first of the kind of there

14:38

was there were several you know basically bad you know

14:40

atrocities before that but police Friday

14:42

was the one I think that sticks in people's minds as being

14:44

and it is you know in terms of just a number of people

14:47

killed and injured one of the worst IRA acts

14:49

of the troubles. Yeah.

14:52

We then started talking about whether the Irish government

14:54

should have intervened in Northern Ireland as

14:56

the violence began to escalate. You know

14:58

it's funny like as

15:01

I say you know my mother's from from the north

15:03

and I live in Belfast and you know I speak

15:05

to a lot of people and they do have this view they didn't

15:07

do enough and I and as I've

15:10

also said they walked a very tight line you know absolutely

15:13

what they did in 69 I don't

15:16

I don't know what they could have done I mean sending

15:18

troops over the border would have been the absolute

15:20

yeah the worst possible thing yeah

15:22

literally an act of war and you know and a terrible

15:25

thing they set up camps you know refugee

15:28

camps a very interesting word actually a very

15:31

loaded word people I spoke to down here and

15:34

funnily enough it was there was one woman

15:36

I interviewed and from Belfast

15:38

and she fled with her husband and their kids

15:40

and they're on Springfield Road

15:43

in 71 I think

15:45

and they were staying when they first got down here

15:47

they stayed with

15:48

Christy Moore's mother she put them up

15:50

in Kildare

15:51

she was a finnegeal counselor but she

15:54

said never let anyone call you a refugee

15:56

because you're in your own country refugee

15:58

is someone from a different country so So it also

16:00

just shows the ambiguity. You

16:03

can't just say all finigalers are partitionists

16:05

or free statists or things like that. It's a

16:07

very nuanced stem once you actually get into

16:09

it. Even I don't like it. It's easier

16:11

to think in terms of blocks, but it's

16:13

not the case.

16:15

The topic of the Dublin-Mannahan bombings then came

16:17

up, and how the bombings were carried out by loyalists

16:20

in an attempt to turn public opinion against

16:22

the IRA.

16:24

Yeah, I think that's certainly

16:26

true, and that was exactly why they did it right,

16:28

and they did it in 72 as well.

16:30

Well, they did it in 72 actually, and

16:34

the Barrett report shows this, that there was almost

16:37

certainly there was British involvement in the 72 bombing,

16:40

probably 74 as well. And 72

16:41

was, you know,

16:44

literally those bombs exploded as they were debating

16:47

an extension to the Offences Against the State

16:49

Act and the Dail. They heard the bombs explode as

16:52

they were voting on this, and that vote was

16:54

not going to pass. It

16:55

was definitely not going to pass. Fina Fahl, Fina

16:57

Fahl who were in power time were actually going to vote against it,

17:00

and the bombs went off, and it

17:03

subsequently passed. So there's

17:05

a lot of questions about that, and why

17:08

those bombs happened at the times that

17:10

they happened.

17:12

Though he didn't write it in the book, Gerog

17:14

believed that though there was a narrative in the media that

17:16

many people in the Republic of Ireland didn't support

17:18

Republicans during the Troubles, in his

17:21

eyes there was a lot more nuance to it.

17:24

But I think while certainly

17:27

yes, a lot of people were turned off by the violence

17:29

and didn't want to know about it, I

17:31

think it's a bit over-egged. And I think,

17:34

you know, this is a kind of, it's not something I talk

17:36

about much in the books, it's more of a theory that

17:40

is a bit more conceptual and you know,

17:42

you want to just give a narrative of the Troubles. But

17:45

like, I'll give you an example. The four years I was

17:47

doing my PhD, you

17:49

know, you're living a normal life, you're kind of going

17:51

to college, you know, you're visiting friends in different places,

17:54

you're

17:54

going to shops, you're going traveling, you're going

17:56

to the hospital and you're sick and stuff. You're

17:59

interacting with a lot of people. as you do as you live a normal

18:01

life. Any time it came up that I

18:03

was studying when I was studying, you know someone would say, oh

18:05

what do you do when I would say I'm doing this? People

18:07

would suddenly talk and they would, because

18:09

I think because of what you were studying they felt that

18:12

almost they were on safe ground and the stories

18:14

you would get from people, just normal

18:17

people, middle class, working class people, I

18:20

think belies the extent to which

18:22

we think that people in the south

18:24

weren't interested and didn't have pro-republican

18:26

sympathies. And I think if

18:29

you think about the 70s, 80s,

18:31

90s, up to the present day digital media has changed

18:33

a bit, but there is a kind of, there's a

18:36

trend we'll say within the

18:38

media which is typically

18:40

kind of, it's centrist,

18:43

but it veers a bit towards

18:45

anti-republicanism and I think there's a class

18:48

issue in that, oh and I think that's something

18:50

we could talk about, but I think

18:53

that gives a bit of a

18:55

skewed perception of people's general

18:57

attitudes and I think the kind of person

18:59

then that would be, let's say a columnist

19:02

for the Irish Times or the Irish Independent or

19:04

something, who will never, will

19:07

say, well look, the people I talk to they

19:09

don't have any of this kind of a view, it's like, but that's because

19:11

you're known as someone who

19:14

has an anti-republican bias, so

19:16

why would anyone open up to you? Whereas,

19:19

you know, me who was just very careful to never

19:21

have any opinion either way when I spoke to people, I

19:23

don't mean during my research back to when I just spoke

19:26

to people in daily life about what I was

19:28

studying, so I didn't know where they sat, almost

19:30

invariably they would come up with kind

19:32

of pro-republican type stories or comments

19:35

or remarks and I found that just fascinating

19:37

because that was not at all the

19:40

perception I had.

19:42

One of the most interesting takes that Garroge had was

19:45

in relation to class

19:46

and how republican paramilitary membership has changed

19:49

from lower middle class to working class.

19:52

To be honest this entire topic merits an episode

19:54

in itself, but we'll leave that to another day.

19:58

Let's say like if you look at the 50s and you're look

20:00

at people like Shahn South, Fergal Handlin

20:02

and you just look at the kind of even

20:04

something like fashion and

20:07

you know and if fashion goes over time you

20:09

look at the 50s and it was kind of more common to wear

20:11

a shirt it was more common to wear a tie and things

20:13

like this and then and let's

20:15

say you just kind of jump ahead to the present day

20:18

and you look at an Easter parade and it's

20:21

a lot of tracksuits you know and that's the

20:23

kind of uniform. I

20:25

think one the kind of the perception

20:28

of the class that was involved in republicanism

20:31

changed and I think the 60s was that kind

20:33

of pivotal time that it changed

20:36

where it was kind of you know your view of the

20:38

1920s not your but like one's view of the

20:40

1920s would be lower middle class it

20:43

was actually a lot more that than working class

20:45

you know that's what studies have shown it's kind of clerks and

20:48

you know people working at the kind of that

20:51

kind of lower level you know within merchants and

20:53

and so on and

20:55

then I think by the 60s

20:57

by the late 60s then you know and where

21:00

it broke out and it broke out in a place that you

21:02

know among a people that were kind of

21:04

had 50 years of job discrimination

21:06

and unemployment in what was also

21:09

typically an industrial area so

21:11

that the the kind of particularly in the

21:13

north no not in the south that's something I talk about in the book

21:16

well particularly in the north then the

21:18

the demographic of who was involved in republicanism

21:20

was almost entirely active republic

21:22

as I'll say instead of the kind of support based almost

21:25

entirely working class

21:27

and I think

21:29

it's almost it's easier to demonize those people

21:32

those people are probably less able to articulate

21:34

their own views and and defend their own views

21:37

you know when coming up against someone who's let's say third

21:39

level educated from you know who went to trinity

21:42

and and has a platform i.e you know

21:44

like a newspaper to talk about it and

21:46

I think you know you had three decades where that

21:48

was able to happen and those people you

21:50

know and you've you've kind of stand out like Danny Morrison

21:53

who came from that working class Belfast background but

21:55

is just

21:56

a very very sharp mind and a very articulate

21:58

guy but

21:59

they

22:00

They weren't in the minority outside they weren't they

22:02

were in the minority and they had very few platforms

22:05

to do so

22:06

So I think

22:07

I think it was easier to demonize those

22:09

people

22:10

because they were because of that class

22:12

I think it's it's easier to demonize work

22:14

cast people But you can almost throw out a hot take on

22:16

that like that if you look at the likes of Sinn Féin now like

22:18

Sinn Féin

22:19

I've been lambasted for a long time in

22:22

Irish politics now again Of course because they'd had

22:24

a direct pipeline to the paramilitaries

22:27

but but you know the Sinn Féin image has changed

22:29

so much in the last 15-20 years and almost

22:32

into I'm

22:35

just a different kind of you know that they're I hate

22:37

to say the word polished You know, but they're kind of I

22:39

know they're appealing to younger generations now We don't remember

22:41

what what happened I guess but at the same time They're

22:44

really polishing their image and

22:46

maybe trying to not look like

22:48

Working class and again, this is all hypothetical

22:51

stuff, but it does kind of it's a really good point

22:53

So I'm always fascinated with class and

22:55

the troubles and because I think they really

22:57

do go hand in hand, you know Yeah,

23:00

well, I mean you're right You know, I mean like

23:02

Chuck to Garmani as a kind

23:04

of a jive at Sinn Féin that's 30 20 years old now

23:06

It probably is

23:07

and

23:08

And it's it is a debate I think that those kind

23:11

of debates happen within Sinn Féin

23:13

in the 90s and early 2000s It was look we have to

23:15

play them at their game You know We're not gonna we're

23:17

not gonna convince people otherwise like we have to we

23:20

have to do these kind of things in order to To

23:22

be able to get more of a platform in order to espouse

23:24

our views because if we just keep kind of you

23:26

know Being

23:27

yeah being kind of

23:29

and the way we are and speaking the way we aren't speaking

23:31

bluntly the way we do We're only convincing

23:34

our own people, you know, whereas you have

23:36

to convince the others

23:39

We then started talking about the provisional IRA

23:41

at where things lay as we went into the 80s

23:44

and how they Restructured with the phasing

23:46

out of brigades and the introduction of active

23:48

service units Okay

23:51

Yeah coming into the 80s

23:54

Just to go back then a few years to explain what

23:57

they were coming into the 80s was that you had

23:59

the ceasefire 75 76 which You

24:03

know, there's a bit of revisionism about it now Like

24:05

the traditional view is that it was a disaster for the

24:08

IRA people say well, it wasn't so bad I

24:10

think it was you know, they they were on ceasefire.

24:12

They broke it occasionally and

24:14

particularly with sectarian attacks It was a tip

24:16

for tap and with loyalists

24:18

at the time and which a

24:21

lot of them we now know and that's come out Is that

24:23

they were it was it was British agents involved

24:25

in that what the what the British were

24:27

in? interested in at the time and again,

24:29

this is What these things

24:31

are like the rotten opinion. This is just you know, this

24:34

is the traditional accepted You know We have records of

24:36

this now with the British were interested

24:38

in when they were engaged in talks which in feign

24:40

in 75 76 They were

24:42

kind of leading them on,

24:43

you know, oh, yeah, we might you know, we're we're talking We're thinking

24:46

about a withdrawal an announcement for withdrawal

24:48

and so on

24:49

but what they were actually doing, you know And and

24:51

Republicans within the movement were warning about

24:53

this at the time. They were building the

24:56

H blocks these massive

24:57

and

24:58

You know when you see it from the air to H blocks a huge

25:01

structure, you know infrastructure of prisons

25:04

and prison buildings and You

25:06

know some people were saying look they're not planning on going anywhere

25:09

They were phasing out internment and terminendent 76

25:12

and what they were doing was there was it was a kind

25:15

of several prongs approach one was to split the

25:18

Iron chin feign because and it nearly

25:20

did split over because some people want that you know

25:22

believed in At the British were negotiating

25:25

in good faith and others didn't so

25:27

there was that like really big divide

25:29

And it did the movement

25:31

didn't split afterwards in a formal sense,

25:33

but it did split in terms of people fell out

25:36

and

25:37

the other thing they were doing was building up their intelligence

25:39

on the IRA because people who had been on the

25:41

run for years and have been watching their backs

25:43

and you know I've been in the south and so on were

25:45

suddenly walking the streets and the

25:47

British were keeping tabs on everyone They were building up

25:50

a huge database the likes that they didn't have previously

25:54

On who was a Republican who was talking to who

25:56

and so on

25:57

and the order if you don't want me

25:59

sites in drugs

25:59

there but so how would they do that in Ireland?

26:02

In the Royaltyco Ireland then?

26:04

Oh no sorry I'm just talking about the the North and

26:06

that in that sense. Okay okay. Yeah although

26:08

there was intelligence sharing between

26:10

Britain and Ireland at the time. Britain

26:13

always felt that the South wasn't

26:15

giving them enough and the South was

26:17

very begrudging about it and I think it was

26:19

an element of pride in that. You know it's like well look you

26:22

know you're the traditional enemy like don't tell us how

26:24

to do our job and and I think you know and some of

26:26

them also they may not have been pro-Republican

26:28

but they weren't pro-British you know

26:31

and yeah of course they're humans at the end of the day.

26:33

But the third thing then and this worked

26:35

for the North and the South, people

26:38

got used to peace.

26:39

You know it was easy to support

26:42

the IRA when the British

26:44

were

26:44

in your streets you know beating you up taking

26:47

your name harass and you you

26:48

know

26:49

all this kind of stuff. When they backed

26:52

off a bit and when there wasn't bombs going off there wasn't

26:54

shootings you know on the father's road for example

26:56

people obviously got used to that. They didn't

26:58

want to go back to that to the violence and

27:01

that was part it was to drag it out to such a

27:03

point that their own community would stop supporting

27:05

them.

27:06

So this is just a yeah

27:08

this is a bit of a long answer but

27:10

when the ceasefire broke down then in

27:13

early 1976 the IRA went went

27:15

back to the conflict. 1977 was their lowest point in

27:18

terms of just in terms of activity in terms

27:21

of you know what they would consider successful activity

27:23

in terms of you know

27:25

attacks on the British army attacks on the RUC

27:27

and the economic bombing campaign.

27:29

So they were they were at

27:31

almost at a collapsing point in 1977

27:34

and then you had a massive restructuring that's where the

27:36

active service units came in the brigade structure

27:39

was was gotten rid of accepting

27:41

people say accepting South Armad but also accepting Kerry.

27:44

Yeah

27:46

yeah and Kerry there was so many of them and

27:48

for the same reason people say when South Armad was

27:50

such a strong pro-republican

27:53

you know that whole. Yeah

27:55

same thing happened in Kerry.

27:58

Yeah

27:58

so they just kept

27:59

They just kept at it. They said, yeah, yeah, we'll do this and

28:02

just went their own way. But

28:05

typical carry.

28:06

But so going into the 80s, that was it. Like

28:09

it was restructured, much more

28:11

slimmed down organization. They

28:13

didn't need the number of volunteers. They had nearly

28:15

70s, you had hundreds. Belfast had

28:17

a couple of hundred getting involved. They didn't need that

28:20

anymore. You know, they needed kind of,

28:22

you still had a large support, like

28:25

community around it, safe houses, things like

28:27

this, intelligence. But

28:28

the actual active volunteers going

28:30

out, doing the bombing shooting,

28:32

they were able to slim that down to several hundreds

28:34

across the entirety of the

28:36

island.

28:37

Slim it down, tighten it up, I guess. Slim it down,

28:39

yeah, tighten it up. And no, we know that

28:41

that didn't work so well in terms of leaks

28:45

and informers and so on and British

28:47

agents, but that was the intention. But

28:50

they were at a kind of a very low point

28:52

in terms of weapons

28:53

by

28:54

the late 1970s. Libyan

28:57

weapons came in the early in 72, 73. You

29:00

had weapons always coming in piecemeal from America.

29:03

Still, you know, like throughout the 30 years,

29:06

there was a

29:07

failed shipment that came in that was supposed to

29:09

come in from Belgium. There was one

29:11

from Amsterdam in Ireland, Netherlands in 73, and

29:14

then a big one from Belgium in 77.

29:17

And there was actually in Dublin, there

29:19

was a man who was killed, was shot

29:21

in a pub,

29:22

as a result of that leak.

29:24

In 70, I think

29:26

it was 78,

29:28

and just after by the liberties,

29:30

he was shot. And a guy went

29:32

to the life sentence for murder in

29:34

the 80s.

29:35

He confessed to it.

29:37

So that was a big weapons shipment that was supposed

29:39

to come in and it didn't, but they did get a few

29:42

successful, like they got, the first time they got

29:44

general purpose machine guns was 1978. They

29:47

were stolen, stolen, you know, appropriated

29:50

from a Marine base in the US, probably

29:52

by

29:53

Irish American soldiers.

29:55

And they were brought over and they were

29:57

unveiled at the, I think was the

29:59

Easter.

30:00

commemoration

30:01

in 1978 in Derry.

30:04

So going into the 80s, yeah

30:07

much more slimmed down, much more kind of,

30:11

I would say like, it

30:13

wasn't kind of a spasmodic campaign of you know

30:15

just attack where you can when you can. It was more

30:18

you know and planning going into things and

30:21

the attack on the paratroopers and war point at the

30:23

end of 1979 demonstrates that it was the

30:25

largest single loss of life in British Army

30:27

since the Second World War. But

30:29

they didn't have a lot of the

30:31

weapons that they wanted in order

30:34

to kind of know that they knew what they were doing and they had

30:36

this thing

30:37

they needed kind of high grade modern weaponry.

30:39

They didn't have an awful lot of that going

30:42

into the 80s.

30:43

And they didn't have much money I'd say to buy it as well.

30:45

No, no money was always a problem, always

30:47

a problem for us. And this is what I talk

30:50

about in the first book. In

30:52

my view, the the

30:54

area was bankroll, not by the South now, but

30:56

a lot by the South and the North. In the North

30:58

you had the social clubs and you

31:00

had things like car parks, which doesn't sound

31:02

like much. But you know, as I said

31:04

to me, if you just kind of put down on the books that

31:07

you know you made 12 grand in terms

31:09

of you know car parks and in

31:11

a week, but you actually made 20, then that's eight grand

31:14

you can siphon off a week to you know through movement.

31:16

So it does add up a lot. But in the South

31:19

it was bank robberies, or rather

31:21

armed robberies, so post offices as well.

31:24

That was just a what's just saying your book it was like

31:26

there was like was around 250 in

31:28

one year or something or it was a huge number. Yeah,

31:30

yeah.

31:31

Now not all of those were the IRA. Like yeah, like

31:33

you say, like you're literally talking about one more

31:35

than one every second day, but that would be in the newspaper

31:38

and robbery.

31:39

Now when I say most about

31:42

maybe 40% of them were the IRA. But

31:44

all of the big,

31:46

the exception of one or two all of the big and

31:49

robberies, because some of them might be 200 pounds

31:51

stolen.

31:52

But all of the big ones you know we're talking like 10 grand

31:54

plus up to you know quarter of a million. They

31:56

were all the IRA.

31:58

And that was

31:59

now it was

31:59

was units based in the south, some of those were

32:02

people from the north, a lot of them were people from the south,

32:04

because that was their role. Your role was

32:06

to provide training and your role was to

32:08

provide funding.

32:10

Okay, and I'm curious, I guess

32:12

it varies, but around this time

32:14

would they be making similar amounts

32:17

coming in from the US do you think? Or was it

32:19

the vast majority was robberies in the south?

32:22

The vast majority was robberies. The America,

32:25

money was coming in regularly from the

32:27

likes of NORAID.

32:30

And you know, there's a big debate, well, did NORAID give

32:32

money to the IRA? And you

32:34

know, I think they did, but that can't be proven.

32:36

But even if they didn't, if NORAID

32:38

was giving money to the Prisoners Dependents Fund,

32:40

for example, that meant that that money

32:43

that was being raised for prisoners could go to the IRA.

32:45

You know, it basically was an offsetting measure.

32:47

Yeah, going through another mayor or whatever. Exactly.

32:53

Just a quick note to say that if you are enjoying this podcast

32:55

and want to support it, you can do so over at patreon.com

32:58

forward slash the troubles podcast.

33:01

I've been filling up the private Patreon feed for over

33:03

three years now, and have a huge amount of Patreon

33:05

exclusive content for you to check out. Each

33:08

episode gets its own companion video where I talk

33:10

about what's happening in Northern Ireland right now, as

33:12

well as some additional details that came up after

33:15

the release of the episode.

33:17

I also have some Patreon only episodes,

33:19

such as one all about the troubles in popular culture

33:22

and the songs that came out of that period.

33:24

And just last week, I released a Patreon exclusive

33:26

interview with Kevin Owens, who was in the Irish

33:29

Army patrolling the Irish border in the 90s,

33:31

and he had some very interesting stories to tell. If

33:34

you have been enjoying this podcast over the last few

33:36

seasons, and would like to help me turn this into

33:38

a full time job,

33:40

you can do so over at patreon.com forward

33:42

slash the troubles podcast.

33:44

Thank you.

33:45

K through 12 education looks different

33:48

than it once did. Students deserve

33:50

a safe, nurturing environment where they can

33:52

learn and grow. With Ohio Virtual

33:55

Academy, students in grades K through 12 have

33:57

access to quality online public education.

34:00

at no cost, including career

34:02

tech programs and college credit plus courses.

34:06

Support your students' success by enrolling them

34:08

in Ohio Virtual Academy at k12.com

34:11

slash educate. That's k12.com

34:14

slash educate. We

34:16

make

34:16

USAA insurance to help you save.

34:19

Take advantage of discounts when you cover your home

34:22

and your ride. Discover how we're helping

34:24

members save at USAA.com

34:27

slash bundle. Restrictions

34:30

apply.

34:31

Can you see the difference you're making

34:33

in the world? Clean Choice Energy

34:35

makes it easy for you to see the impact you

34:37

have by switching to clean electricity. With

34:39

our advanced clean energy impact statements,

34:42

you see more than just your monthly usage. You

34:44

see the true environmental benefits your choice

34:47

has. One year of clean electricity

34:49

is on average the same as avoiding about 5,000

34:51

pounds of coal being burned.

34:55

Visit cleanchoice.com slash podcast

34:57

to see the difference.

35:04

I then asked Gerard how the IRA got their

35:07

explosives during this period and I found

35:09

the answer fascinating. Gerard Cooke,

35:11

IRA The vast majority of explosives were coming from the south

35:13

but it was homemade. So in the early

35:15

70s, the 70-71 kind of dried up by 72 but 70-71, we're talking

35:18

about every quarry,

35:23

every council place and council

35:25

building in the south was being raided for gelignite.

35:28

So that commercial explosive, it dried

35:30

up by 72 because legislation was brought in. So

35:35

for example,

35:35

this is a mad thing.

35:37

Up until 1972, anyone

35:39

who was a rate payer, so like

35:41

anyone who owned a property, could go into their

35:44

local council. So you go to Ennis or

35:46

Clare County Council and they had to give you

35:48

a list of everywhere in the county

35:50

that stored explosives.

35:52

Wow, okay. Yeah,

35:57

and so people just knew exactly

35:59

everywhere.

35:59

that explosives are being held and so they

36:02

were all being stolen. They were, you know, they're

36:04

obviously being used as explosive but sometimes

36:06

they were captured and the gel ignite which, you

36:08

know, they're sticks, they look like a

36:10

stick of dynamite, it's kind of yellowishy colour.

36:12

And it would say, you know, it would have a stamp on it, you know, of

36:14

the County Council. So

36:17

the British understandably were born to their governments. What

36:20

the hell are you doing here? You know, you need to heighten up.

36:22

So there was the two big mines in Ireland.

36:24

The

36:26

two ones that I talk about are the Aurigna

36:28

mines, which is up in so Rothkam

36:30

and Leechham

36:31

and Leechham.

36:33

And then you have the Silver mines in

36:35

Tipperary.

36:38

And that was, I mean, that was happening all throughout the 70s

36:40

as well into the 80s where as you say, people were bringing

36:42

home sticks in their lunch boxes. Several

36:44

soldiers went to jail and did hard

36:47

labour because they were actually, they

36:49

were tasked with searching the miners

36:51

and protecting the mines. They were stealing them. And

36:54

yeah, that case I mentioned in the book is

36:56

that in 82,

36:57

they discovered that there was a massive

37:00

raid on the mine and they took all

37:02

these commercial explosives and they

37:04

were some of them were discovered in the north, but a lot of them

37:06

were actually just put to use. And the Irish

37:08

government warned the British government that about

37:11

this raid, and it was considered, I mean, they use

37:13

the term mission impossible, you know, they went

37:15

down a kind of an adjacent

37:17

mine and actually went, you know, underground for

37:20

a mile or so or half a mile to this

37:22

place, locked up everything,

37:24

but took you know, the exact amount they took.

37:26

And they also took the kind of corresponding

37:29

number of detonators that you would need. So it's a really

37:31

kind of meticulously planned out thing. But

37:34

I came across this story in the newspapers

37:36

when I was doing research back for the PhD.

37:38

And it was only a couple of months before that I'd been interviewing

37:41

a fella from

37:43

monster.

37:44

And he told me about this case.

37:46

He didn't mention that he just said all it was a time where

37:49

you know, we were

37:51

exposed for being taken out regularly lunchboxes.

37:54

And the foreman was not doing his job properly

37:57

in terms of inventory. So when he finally did

37:59

do an inventory, it was all this gone. So

38:01

he actually went and reported that it was a big raid, rather

38:03

than admit that he hadn't done inventory for several months.

38:06

So I don't know what the truth is, but I came across the

38:08

newspaper thing and said, this is the story he was

38:10

telling me about.

38:12

And then there was something else that I think you mentioned then.

38:15

So again,

38:16

you'll know this better

38:18

than I do, but I guess was there

38:20

a movement then to

38:22

change the makeup of fertilizer so that the

38:24

fertilizer that can be used to make bombs couldn't

38:27

be used to make bombs anymore. Was that kind of

38:29

the standards across Ireland change or something? Or how did that

38:31

work?

38:32

Yeah. And it's a kind of

38:34

a mad story about that as well, which is similar to

38:37

what I just mentioned Sunday.

38:39

In the early seventies, they discovered

38:41

that the IRA discovered it was Jack McCabe who was

38:43

the first quartermaster for visual IRA. He

38:45

was actually killed making explosives.

38:48

He was cooking fertilizers.

38:50

So you're boiling it. But what it okay. Yeah.

38:52

I mean, it's it's find this online probably

38:55

be the FBI will find you as well. But yeah, so

38:57

you get it. You get it. And it's like, it's

39:00

like granule. If you ever

39:02

see, you see fertilizer, you put it in a trough

39:04

and you heat it on a very, very low heat

39:07

and you keep turning it.

39:09

And what the heat does is it burns off

39:12

all the stuff that you don't need. So you've

39:15

you've ammonium nitrate and

39:17

it basically gets rid of what you're left at

39:19

the end is little tiny white

39:21

granules

39:22

and you mix that with oil. And

39:25

then and that's what you have. That's what you

39:27

get your explosives. But that's an interesting idea. All

39:29

you have to do is ignite that. And

39:32

yeah,

39:34

you need something to set it off. And so

39:37

in the early seventies, the gel ignite I

39:39

mentioned that commercial explosive in mind, they were there

39:41

was so much of that that they were blowing

39:43

that up, you know, and then when that started drying

39:46

up, they were still able to get small amounts of it throughout

39:48

the seventies. But they were using that as a

39:50

booster basically. Like a primer. Yeah. Yeah.

39:52

A primer. Exactly. Because they sort of stuff needs

39:55

something like that. I need the high sharp

39:57

shock. Yeah,

39:58

you can't just hold it. You can't hold a master. Exactly.

40:01

Yeah, they do it with Semtex,

40:02

you can throw that into a fire, campfire, it

40:05

just burn all night.

40:06

Probably won't test that out. No, I know.

40:09

I know the guy when he told me, he's very brave, he did

40:11

that. So what happened

40:14

in the early 70s was they

40:17

discovered this method. And as I mentioned,

40:19

Jack McCabe, he was actually turning it and

40:21

he was using a shovel and the shovel

40:23

hit the concrete, caused a spark. So

40:25

exploded. He lingered for a

40:27

few days in the hospital. So

40:30

they found this way and at

40:32

the time, the

40:35

fertilizer in Ireland was almost 100%.

40:37

It had the ammonium

40:39

nitrate, it

40:41

was nearly 100%. And

40:44

calcium carbonate is the other makeup

40:47

of it. And so that's what you need. So

40:50

you're talking about you're getting really kind of bang

40:52

for your buck in terms of the amount that you

40:54

can convert into explosives. Now, the

40:56

reason for that seemingly is that the

40:58

Irish grass apparently doesn't have a very

41:01

high nitrogen amount.

41:03

And so and the cattle need this. So that's why there was

41:05

such a high amount of nitrate in this fertilizer.

41:08

So the British government put pressure on the

41:10

Irish government. And what they

41:12

did was they changed their fertilizer, the one

41:14

that was available in the north, they put pressure

41:16

on the Irish government to do the same. They

41:18

said, look, you know, and then they made a very good case

41:21

for that. You'd see him in 72 was

41:23

just bombings every single day nearly

41:25

in the Lord. So the Irish government

41:27

did change it, they brought it from about 98% ammonium nitrate

41:30

down to 74%.

41:32

And that cost huge

41:34

money, you know, you have to change your entire production line

41:37

and the material in them. There was a big

41:39

one in Wexford, huge fertilizer plantless,

41:41

this one somewhere else. So it's a huge cost.

41:44

And obviously, then the there's

41:46

less farmers need to buy more of it basically,

41:49

in order to continue, you know, providing

41:51

their cows with the amount of nitrogen they need for

41:53

dairy.

41:54

So there was a huge cost on the farmers, and

41:56

there was a huge cost on the government.

41:58

So in the late 70s, then And the British government

42:00

said, look, that's still too much. That 74 is still

42:02

too much.

42:03

You need to reduce it again. The Irish government pushed

42:05

back and they said, look, you know, we lost money.

42:08

We're still losing money hand over fist as a

42:10

result of these practices. So are our

42:12

farmers. We have to subsidize.

42:14

So they didn't want to do this. So the British government

42:16

said, well, look, let's work together on finding

42:19

a way to make the current fertilizer, to

42:22

make it in such a way that it can't be. You can't

42:24

extract the ammonium nitrate from it, turn it into

42:26

an explosive.

42:27

And the Irish government over the course of five

42:30

more years kind of hummed and hard, and sometimes

42:32

they were in favor of this and sometimes they, you

42:34

know, did a bit of R and D with the British government. And sometimes

42:36

they didn't. And I think a lot of that was due to the fact

42:38

that Irish governments,

42:40

quite a few changes of Irish government at the time,

42:42

each one had their own policies and so on. Yeah. And

42:45

then the hunger strikes, obviously that soured relations

42:47

for quite a while between the governments,

42:49

but

42:50

what happened was the British ended up pouring, you

42:53

know, the equivalent nowadays of tens of

42:55

millions into research into how

42:58

can we make the fertilizer in such a way that you can't

43:00

extract explosives? The Irish government

43:02

provided labs for them to do it as well. And they collaborated

43:04

with them in Ireland

43:06

and eventually, um,

43:07

in the, I think around 85,

43:10

they found a way, they said, okay, look, the

43:12

fertilizer now it's got a coating, basically a new

43:14

coating around each granule that you can't,

43:16

um,

43:17

you can't boil it down

43:19

now again,

43:20

before I ever came across this, I only came across that

43:22

a few years ago in the archives in London, about 10,

43:25

12 years ago, I was interviewing a guy

43:27

for the PhD

43:29

down here. He was, he was involved in the quartermaster department

43:31

in Sutter Command.

43:32

He just happened to mention just in passing

43:34

the story, he said, oh yeah, in the, in the eighties,

43:37

we went from boiling it to grinding it. And

43:39

he mentioned mangles. So those big industrial

43:41

things that you use when you're doing them, laundry,

43:44

you know, like flatten out, there's two rollers

43:46

and they flatten out something that you run into and he said

43:48

that we use mangles and industrial coffee

43:51

grinders. And I just filed that

43:53

away in the back of my head. That's interesting. What

43:55

happened in the British, um, when the British created

43:58

this new fertilizer, and I remember. reading it in the

44:00

report, it was just this eureka moment, they

44:02

said this can't be boiled but

44:04

there's one potential downside. They added

44:06

this caveat in the report, they said if

44:09

they're impacted in a certain way

44:11

it can break the coating and then you can actually

44:14

get at it. And they found this out because

44:16

I think they actually dropped some of the fertilizer

44:18

and on whatever way it dropped these

44:20

small little granules the coating was damaged.

44:23

So they said look,

44:25

don't tell anyone about this basically, like this is the one

44:27

way that,

44:28

and somehow the IRA found it out. So

44:30

all this nearly eight years of research,

44:33

tens of millions, all this energy going

44:36

into making this and the IRA said just stop

44:38

boiling it, we just got mangoes.

44:40

And they continued the same, and not just continued

44:42

the same, but the year after that was introduced

44:45

the largest bonds the IRA ever used

44:47

using homemade explosives were

44:49

detonated and discovered in the north. So

44:51

it had absolutely no impact

44:53

on their capabilities. So I wonder was

44:56

it just a really good research

44:58

and development unit of the IRA or was it

45:00

a little bit more than that? Was there obviously

45:03

some information that came down to them? Because

45:05

it's very interesting to

45:08

question which of the two it is.

45:10

You'd wonder and that was like

45:13

an arms race constantly throughout the troubles.

45:15

Anytime the British would have a countermeasure the IRA

45:17

would try and find a way around it and

45:19

so on. Whatever it is, a lot

45:21

of cases the British Army would only really be able

45:23

to research a

45:27

bomb after it's gone off and figure out

45:29

how do they detonate this. So it was always a

45:33

captain mouse game but the IRA in a lot of cases seemed

45:35

one step ahead.

45:36

It

45:40

did, yeah absolutely. What

45:43

I argue in the book is that,

45:46

and my belief is that the troubles

45:49

went on as long as they did because there was a

45:51

number we'll never know, like an unknown number but

45:53

a hugely significant proportion

45:56

of the population of the south

45:58

had sympathies for

46:00

for Republican, militant Republicanism.

46:03

But a large

46:04

percentage of that would be soft, you

46:06

know, would be kind of passive.

46:08

And that

46:09

that population particularly would be

46:12

seriously turned off,

46:13

you know, and you know, disgusted by by

46:16

the killing of Gary and would make those feelings

46:18

known

46:18

verbally to Republicans, but also by saying,

46:21

well, no, you can't use my land anymore. No, I'm

46:23

not going to, you know, help you out anymore.

46:25

So I think the 80s, the 80s was the worst

46:27

year in terms of character fatalities.

46:30

And

46:31

I think actually during the troubles, you know, not

46:33

just the IRA, but there was, there

46:34

was other killings. And I think that's because armed

46:37

robberies,

46:38

you know, it was people who were killed by kind of normal,

46:40

let's say, non non Republican

46:43

armed robbers as well, because I think

46:45

the IRA kind of introduced the gun into robberies.

46:49

A number of Irish Garde were also killed

46:51

by the IRA during the troubles. So I

46:53

put the question to garage if this hurt the IRA

46:56

cause.

46:58

Yeah, I mean, the killings like guy, I

47:00

remember I spoke to a fella, and he

47:03

said to me, you

47:04

know, we accepted that whenever a guard

47:06

was killed, and there was a strict rule within,

47:09

you know, the IRA is actual constitution, General

47:11

Standing Order number eight, was that if you ever

47:13

came up against soldiers,

47:16

Irish Army soldiers, or the guarantee,

47:19

what your priority was was to get away with

47:21

the cashier weapons and to escape. And

47:23

under no circumstances are you ever to engage.

47:26

Now part of that was pragmatic. Part

47:29

of it was you know, they didn't view them as the enemy. Some

47:31

people from the North and the South did, you

47:33

know, and that's a different story. But it

47:36

was pragmatic because they tried, they tried

47:38

to go up against the guards

47:41

in around about late 30s, early

47:43

40s, when you know, death was in power, and you had the Second

47:46

World War. And that's when you had the first offenses

47:48

against the state act, and the state just crushed

47:50

them, you

47:51

know, it executed several IRA members, and

47:53

it just in turn them just rounded up hundreds of them and

47:55

turn them into current.

47:56

And so the IRA knew that we can't do this, we can't

47:58

afford to take on the state

48:00

and you know one of the reasons that the South

48:03

never introduced the internment was they never had a strong

48:05

enough reason to and the IRA knew that

48:07

as well it's like if we start killing Garreds or we make

48:09

that a policy they'll introduce it and they'll crush

48:11

us so there was a very there was a very pragmatic

48:13

bent to it but yeah just to get

48:16

back to it there was a guy who was saying to me he said look we accepted

48:18

that if

48:19

Garred was killed the gloves came off

48:21

that was the term he used you know they

48:23

would round up every known republican within the area

48:26

and you'd be

48:27

beaten you'd just be beaten you know in the

48:30

station to the point of hospitalization as

48:32

has happened in many many occasions

48:34

and they accepted that so we you know we didn't

48:36

want that no it's like even someone who says

48:38

i don't care if Garred dies but i don't want them to because

48:40

yeah yeah and they've you know they're

48:42

gonna they're gonna find weapons that are in transit

48:45

because this person didn't know that they you know that

48:47

this was happening at times they were going about their

48:49

other public activity they're gonna find weapons

48:52

there also was the case of i guess the blind eye

48:55

you know but in maybe some cases i don't know where

48:57

to be but probably with the irish army as

48:59

well like

49:00

if they're not coming

49:01

for us on you know

49:04

i think there was many cases of just turning

49:06

the other way turning the other way those are heading north

49:08

across the border you know i don't know what you agree just for

49:10

you but i feel like that probably happened to go a bit

49:12

it did yeah absolutely i mean you

49:15

know down here i know people

49:17

it's people who would have been involved in the 50s so they

49:19

would have been kind of middle aged in the 70s 80s

49:22

and still involved but on the margins and Garred's

49:24

saying that saying look just don't do anything

49:27

blatant don't force me

49:28

to come after you

49:30

and that you know that was that was said to people

49:32

across the 26 counties

49:36

and you mentioned in your book that i guess port

49:38

leash prisoned and i guess this was probably in the wake

49:40

of i think was it the killing of garred d or was it the

49:42

targeting of

49:44

prison officers in port leash that suddenly

49:46

the

49:47

port leash prison guards just elected

49:49

the prison just became very severe

49:51

i don't know was it for all inmates or was it just for

49:54

uh paramilitary inmates or why why

49:56

was it like that was just a bad bad a

49:59

badly run prisoner or was it was

50:01

there just a lot of animosity between the two groups?

50:03

I think just to correct

50:05

one thing, they never paragated

50:08

wardens in Port Leish. The

50:11

chief warden was killed, and it was by

50:13

the IRA, but that was against

50:15

policy. So there

50:17

was a policy of never actually going after, because

50:20

they could make life very tough for

50:22

prisoners inside.

50:23

What

50:25

happened was things apparently got really

50:27

bad in 1976. It

50:29

was actually Martin Ferris said to me that he believes

50:31

that the Irish government, when they seen

50:34

the phasing out of special

50:36

category status, basically political prisoner status

50:38

in the North in 1976, and

50:41

then you had led to the dirty protest,

50:43

and the I'm sorry, the blanket, and then the dirty protest.

50:46

Ferris believes that the Irish government

50:48

were bringing their policies in line with

50:51

what was going on in the North.

50:52

So no more kind of toleration

50:54

of Republican trappings within the prison, whether

50:58

that's playing clothes or the ability to

51:00

drill in the square and have a military

51:03

structure within the prison.

51:04

So it was the 76s when it got very

51:06

bad, and you had a hunger strike in 77. You

51:09

had one in 75, but you had a big one in 77.

51:12

Quite a few people who were on that

51:14

hunger strike died in their early 40s.

51:17

People like Pat Ward from Donegal,

51:19

McBrody and Clare. Not

51:22

Hulconnel even, it was adjutant, the IRA. He

51:24

died very young, I believe it was because of the hunger

51:26

strike.

51:27

But it got very bad at that point.

51:30

Now, in fairness, you know, like,

51:32

well, there was a lot of kind of pressure,

51:34

you know, and brutality brought on

51:36

the Republican business. They were also trying to escape

51:38

an awful lot. I think so

51:41

the bomb importation, so on. So life was

51:43

very tough for the Warders as well.

51:45

But it got progressively

51:48

worse. It didn't get better. It got worse for about a decade.

51:50

And the visiting conditions were terrible.

51:53

You were maybe 12 foot away from

51:55

your family member. Those

51:58

visits cut short because...

51:59

people spoke Irish, any kind of criticism

52:02

of government that

52:04

be cut short. You had people who would travel from

52:07

Donegal back then, it was about a six hour trip

52:09

one way. And they would just be told,

52:12

no, you're not allowed to do your son today. Things like this.

52:14

So it was very bad within

52:16

the prison.

52:17

And

52:18

there was, as I say, brutality. And there

52:21

was a lot of strip searching.

52:23

Strip searching, I

52:25

think people might be familiar with this if you've ever seen the film

52:27

Hunger. But it's not as simple, take

52:30

your clothes off and stand there. It was a really brutal

52:32

exercise and you'd be spread over

52:34

and there. Yeah. And what they would deliberately

52:36

do is they would check your anus first

52:39

and then your mouth with the same gloves.

52:41

It was deliberate humiliation and

52:43

brutality. So, but

52:46

what ended up happening was this was very

52:48

well known. Amnesty were raising

52:50

this regularly.

52:53

The Irish Council of Civil Liberties were raising this regularly,

52:55

but it wasn't really, it wasn't getting traction.

52:57

The government didn't care. But what actually happened was

52:59

the Port Leish Prison Officers Association came

53:01

out and said, we don't want to do this. We're

53:04

being told to brutalize these people.

53:06

And if we don't, we're getting bullied within

53:08

our jobs. And

53:10

we're being called provolovers. And we're being, you know,

53:13

like it's being spread that we're actually sympathizes.

53:16

We don't want to have to do this kind of stuff. So

53:18

it was a really, really odd situation that was

53:20

happening in Port Leish, where apparently it was a small

53:22

number of wardens, senior

53:24

wardens who were directing this and guards

53:26

who were allowed coming drunk. That was

53:29

the accusation, but it was several priests

53:31

attested to this. Guards coming in drunk and

53:34

picking fights with the prisoners, you know, and

53:36

then attacking them like, you know, several guards

53:38

to one prisoner kind of thing and reading

53:40

out their letters and making fun of, you know, the letters

53:43

and the spelling within the letters and stuff like

53:45

this, just kind of deliberately kind of humiliating

53:47

things. Dehumanizing, yeah. Yeah, dehumanizing.

53:50

The thing is, they finally got to a point where there was

53:53

almost

53:53

a compromise reach and they actually

53:56

scaled back for the first time in nearly 10 years. They

53:58

in 10 years, they had.

53:59

more humane visiting conditions now,

54:02

but in a couple of weeks the IRA tried to escape, mass

54:04

escape, you know, so it's just like straight

54:07

away it comes back in, well look, glad you had your jazz

54:09

and your ruin. Yeah. It

54:11

was an impossible position I guess. Exactly, yeah. We

54:14

then moved on to talking about Dublin in the early 80s,

54:16

which was in the grip of a heroin epidemic. I

54:19

asked Gerhard, what connection, if any, the

54:22

IRA had to this epidemic?

54:24

Yeah, it's an ongoing

54:26

debate really, actually, the extent

54:28

of the relationship. Like, I borrowed

54:30

a term in the book and I

54:32

wrote a paper on this years back, it

54:35

was the big bluff.

54:36

So,

54:37

I mean, you had this heroin epidemic and

54:39

just to say about that, like, Dublin in 1981,

54:43

82 had a higher heroin rate, addiction rate,

54:45

among teenagers than New York or Paris

54:47

or Brooklyn. It

54:48

was the worst in the Western world. I

54:51

think in some parts of Dublin, it was 12, 13% of 16 year

54:55

olds who were addicted to heroin, like, unimaginably

54:58

horrific.

54:59

And the governments,

55:01

successive governments did nothing about

55:03

this, you know, and this is, you know, this is kind of reports

55:06

coming out of Trinity, subsequently about

55:08

this, like drugs, the government did nothing, they

55:10

didn't really care. Now, Gerhard's have come out since

55:13

and said, we wanted to go after drug dealers,

55:15

but we were told to go after our militaries,

55:17

you know, that like,

55:19

but you know, if you're the kind of person

55:21

living in somewhere like Crumlin, you know, and

55:23

you're worried about your kids, you don't care about,

55:26

you just know the guards aren't doing anything. You can literally

55:28

see the drug dealers, they just hang outside all

55:31

day dealing drugs and there's no guards. So,

55:34

they did, they, families in

55:36

like, North inner city Dublin, went to the,

55:39

the Fish Library first, were still big

55:41

at the time, in a kind of secretive

55:43

way and asked them, they said, look, here's the names

55:45

of the drug dealers, here's dresses, will you go and shoot

55:47

them? And

55:48

they said, no, we don't do that. And then

55:50

they went to

55:52

the professionals and they said, will you do this? They

55:54

said, no, look, we don't do that. And

55:56

the provisionals, it was a very pragmatic thing as

55:58

well. It's like, well, if we start doing this,

55:59

guards are going to come down on us. We're trying

56:02

to prosecute this conflict in the north. So it was a

56:04

very pragmatic thing,

56:05

but at the end of the day,

56:07

there were

56:08

huge numbers of Dublin people involved in the IRA

56:11

or on the margins of it in those

56:13

areas.

56:14

So

56:15

it was their kids

56:16

who were with this problem. So

56:19

the other neighbors were saying, why can't you do something?

56:21

You know where there's guns. Why can't you go? You

56:24

don't even have to just go and threaten

56:26

them. They know who you are. They'll be afraid of you. And

56:28

so it kind of,

56:30

you know, it was very, um, nothing, none

56:32

of this was planned. It's kind of evolved.

56:34

So the first way they did it was they just, you

56:36

know, a group of people went to a drug dealer. So they gave them

56:38

an ultimatum to get out. They didn't. So

56:40

the whole, almost like the whole community

56:43

went in and removed their furniture and

56:45

they formed a line so that everyone touched it so that

56:47

everyone was culpable. So the guards would have to prosecute,

56:50

you know, 60 people or whatever it was.

56:52

And they, and that worked. Now,

56:54

you can come, you know, and people have come and criticized

56:57

and they've criticized at the time and said, well, look, you didn't address

56:59

the issue. The drug dealers went somewhere else and

57:01

dealt drugs. But it's like, if you're the, if

57:03

you're the family member, like you don't care, like you

57:05

just, you got rid of it. Get out of my back, Arden. Yeah,

57:08

exactly. And like, how can you blame anyone for,

57:10

you know, for doing that, you know, and

57:12

not thinking about, you know, well, how do we systematically

57:14

address this issue? But what happened

57:17

was it was kind of let no one then to, because

57:20

you had some very prominent people like Christy

57:22

Burke who was Sinn Féin. He wasn't elected rep at

57:24

the time, but he was the kind of representative in the area

57:26

around North Hardik Street.

57:28

He

57:30

was, he had been, like

57:32

he'd been in jail at twice at that point in the 70s for IRA

57:34

membership. He was caught in a training camp.

57:37

And

57:38

I don't know if he was in the IRA at the time, you

57:41

know, but he was certainly in Sinn Féin. And he

57:43

was known, he was a known Republican. John

57:45

Noonan was another one.

57:46

They were, so they were always put at the front of

57:48

these marches, you know, when they would march

57:50

to a drug dealer's house and so that,

57:53

and that's the big bluff. It was kind of, well, Arden,

57:55

you know, is this an IRA thing? Is it not? And so people,

57:57

the drug dealers would be afraid. But you

57:59

know,

57:59

was also let known to these groups and

58:02

as they started coalescing actually formalizing to

58:04

concern parents against drugs and foreign branches around the

58:06

city it was let known look if

58:08

something happens. Well if drug dealers

58:10

kick back we'll get involved

58:13

but

58:14

without ever getting the sanction of

58:16

the leadership

58:17

of the IRA that they would never have allowed that.

58:19

Now the thing is and it did happen

58:21

you know there was a guy who was involved to concern parents against drugs

58:24

was shot in the legs

58:25

and but very shortly after that

58:27

a known criminal was abducted by

58:29

the IRA and he was held for nearly a fortnight

58:31

and then they tried to abduct Martin Foley

58:34

the viper and it was five guys

58:36

were caught or four were caught and one got away and

58:38

the guys happened

58:41

to

58:42

you know neighbors called when they saw him being

58:44

abducted from his house.

58:45

What

58:46

had happened then was basically the

58:49

Sinn Féin particularly which was starting to get much more

58:52

of a become more of an equal partner in the relationship

58:54

it was always the poor cousin in the 70s but

58:56

in the 80s was becoming much more powerful post

58:59

hunger strike they saw what was happening and

59:01

they and they could see and Sherry Adams had this

59:03

famous line you can't get votes

59:05

in Ballymun for doors being kicked

59:07

down in Bally Murphy you know we need to actually get involved

59:10

in activism in the south

59:11

and they saw that and they and they

59:13

and like subsequently I mean 1999 because it

59:16

was there was several like iterations of concerned

59:18

parents but 1999

59:19

good

59:22

number was like the highest Sinn Féin

59:24

vote terms in the council elections

59:27

that it happened since the 20s in Dublin and half

59:30

of those people were prominent in

59:32

the anti-drug movement.

59:33

I still remember science one place in

59:35

Dublin and I still remember science up saying needle-free zone

59:38

you know so yeah it's something that it obviously was a

59:41

massive issue

59:42

yeah I like the thing just done

59:45

like on crime in general think well

59:47

drugs right it's it's it's a couple of things

59:49

one is it'll alienate communities there in but

59:51

to they are those communities you know so they

59:53

don't like drugs either yeah you know

59:56

and there'll be a lot of like

59:57

alcohol aside almost straight edge you

59:59

know in the in the

59:59

mentality. Grass is

1:00:02

as bad as heroin kind of thing.

1:00:03

But the other element to that, and this

1:00:05

is one of the reasons also why the IRA shop

1:00:08

petty criminals in the north, particularly

1:00:10

in Belfast, it's not just because they're preying

1:00:12

on their own communities, it's because they are the

1:00:15

people that the police will pick up and turn out

1:00:17

to be an informer, because they have leverage

1:00:19

on them because they're dealing drugs or something. So that's

1:00:21

why you don't want criminals in your community if

1:00:23

you're the IRA, it's because they are the people

1:00:25

who the guards or the REC are going to

1:00:27

use as informers.

1:00:30

In one of the previous episodes, I covered

1:00:32

the discovery of the Exund, which was a ship

1:00:34

laden with weapons, explosives and ammunition

1:00:37

destined for Ireland. It

1:00:38

turned out that this shipment was the fifth shipment

1:00:40

to come into the country in recent years from Libya, but

1:00:44

the first to be caught.

1:00:46

With the realization that there was a significant amount

1:00:48

of weapons in the Republic of Ireland, the

1:00:50

Irish Guardi launched what became known as Operation

1:00:52

Mallard, as an attempt to find some

1:00:55

of these weapons. I

1:00:57

asked Geroid about the efficacy of this operation.

1:01:02

Yeah, yeah, largest operation, security

1:01:04

operation in the history of the state.

1:01:06

So 60,000 homes searched.

1:01:08

And was it, would it be considered very

1:01:10

successful or was it moderately successful? No,

1:01:13

no, it was a failure.

1:01:15

So

1:01:18

it was, it was an immediate failure. And subsequent

1:01:21

years, they got a lot of Libyan weapons. But

1:01:23

Mallard was a time bound operation.

1:01:27

What had happened was when they realized all these weapons

1:01:29

had actually landed in the country.

1:01:31

So as I say, like 60,000 houses, they even

1:01:34

searched islands off the coast,

1:01:36

they searched them, mobile home parks, they searched

1:01:38

boats on the rivers, or on the Shannon,

1:01:40

you know, in Loch Rean, in Loch Third. They searched

1:01:43

anywhere they could find and they got almost nothing.

1:01:45

And I mean, literally, you could count on one hand

1:01:47

kind of the amount that they got. And

1:01:49

when you consider it was thousands

1:01:52

and thousands of AK-47s, you know,

1:01:54

hundreds of general purpose machine guns and billions

1:01:57

of rounds and, you know, and everything in grenades

1:01:59

and- pistols and they got none of it

1:02:02

and what they did uncover was

1:02:05

bunkers

1:02:06

and purpose build bunkers on farmland

1:02:08

in several places

1:02:10

that were waiting they were basically primed for

1:02:12

to be used as storage points so it's

1:02:14

almost like they were you

1:02:16

know it was great that they got these because then these

1:02:18

bunkers could never be used but they're almost too

1:02:20

early

1:02:21

what had happened was that the weapons that had come in

1:02:24

were stored in master dumps there

1:02:26

was only three or four of them

1:02:28

in the monster we'll just say monster

1:02:31

and these are you know and we're talking like massive massive

1:02:33

underground things that couldn't be picked up by

1:02:35

aerial

1:02:36

surveillance because that's what they that's

1:02:38

how they found some of these bunkers and it couldn't be picked

1:02:40

up by metal detectors that were too deep

1:02:42

or any kind of like leader lighter or anything

1:02:45

that was available at the time and

1:02:47

they were going to be broken up and moved into these

1:02:49

smaller bunkers which are still sizable

1:02:52

bunkers but that hadn't happened yet so

1:02:54

the guards were too early when they swooped and

1:02:57

the soldiers and

1:02:58

they didn't have enough intelligence to find these master bunkers

1:03:01

never did they never found them I mean they continued

1:03:04

up until decommissioning

1:03:07

it was almost like they didn't have an official name but

1:03:09

it was almost like got mallard you know dragged out

1:03:11

that they still kept doing and that's where they were a bit more successful

1:03:14

it was almost like you know it was almost bursting at

1:03:16

the seams it was it was only like apart

1:03:18

from once you move them out of these master dumps

1:03:20

it was almost too much so that you know the guards

1:03:23

and I'm not to undermine their successes

1:03:25

yeah exactly almost invariably with

1:03:27

so much of it

1:03:28

well what was that the thing the quote jarting's

1:03:30

book was enough weapons to start a civil war and

1:03:33

whim so

1:03:36

with a massive amount of weapons what

1:03:38

position were the IRA in by the end of

1:03:40

the 80s

1:03:42

I'm not sure is to be honest

1:03:44

like materially yeah they were in the best position

1:03:47

in the history of the organization you know

1:03:49

we even go back to the 20s materially they were

1:03:51

in that

1:03:52

but they almost they didn't have the you

1:03:54

know the capacity to use what

1:03:57

they had they didn't that go to exploit what they had

1:03:59

And you're right, you know, the

1:04:02

intelligence game was really wrapping up.

1:04:04

Brilliant book if

1:04:06

you haven't read it or if you have a guy

1:04:08

called Lee Heade, the intelligence

1:04:11

war against the IRA.

1:04:12

But he basically systematically

1:04:15

kind of addresses all the, let's

1:04:17

say all the accepted narrative

1:04:20

about how the British had

1:04:22

kind of got on top of the IRA by the 90s. And

1:04:24

really, you know, and it's an academic book. It is

1:04:27

a bit dry, but it's very

1:04:29

convincing and compelling that, like

1:04:32

his argument is that by no means had the British

1:04:34

got on top of the IRA in terms of intelligence by the

1:04:37

time of the ceasefire and therefore the ceasefire was

1:04:39

not as a result of like they

1:04:41

were constantly changing tactics. You

1:04:43

know, in the early 70s, 71, 72, the

1:04:45

IRA, you know, Eamonn McCann famously said,

1:04:48

like Derry City Centre looked like it

1:04:50

had been hit by the blitz.

1:04:51

Like they, there was, you know, at one point, I think there was only two

1:04:53

shops on the main street in Derry that were open

1:04:56

and being bombed.

1:04:57

You know, and that was the economic bombing campaign. And then they

1:04:59

had, you know, they were trying different tactics. Yeah,

1:05:02

and then they manned over in the UK and like, yeah,

1:05:04

and was it reducing scorched earth

1:05:06

kind of where they were going after barracks?

1:05:08

Exactly. And so this is the

1:05:10

thing is like, you know, in the,

1:05:12

in the early 80s, they went back to attacking

1:05:15

barracks in England

1:05:17

and, you know, there was several, you know, and soldiers,

1:05:20

you know, the Hyde Park and the Regent Park bombing. And then there was

1:05:22

like deal barracks and, and, um,

1:05:24

Woolwich and stuff. But you

1:05:26

know, they hadn't done the economic bombing in London

1:05:28

by that point. 92 was the first big one.

1:05:31

So you know, it's funny when you think about the

1:05:33

weapons that come in from Libya, at no point

1:05:36

at that time, were they thinking of,

1:05:38

you know, that that strategy. So their

1:05:40

strategy was constantly evolving. So it's hard to say

1:05:42

like,

1:05:43

at any given point, what they have,

1:05:45

what they have lost, because there were strategies they didn't

1:05:47

even know that they were going to adapt, you know, even

1:05:50

a few years before when they were engaged on this, you

1:05:52

know, and as we know, like what happened

1:05:54

in London, like, that's what, you

1:05:56

know, my view anyway, that's what brought British to the table.

1:05:59

He's talking about the Canary Wharf bombing

1:06:02

here, which was a bombing that the IRA carried

1:06:04

out in London in 1996, which

1:06:06

caused £150 million worth of damage

1:06:08

and two fatalities.

1:06:10

Yeah, I mean they were literally told, they were told

1:06:12

by Lloyds, they said we can't guarantee

1:06:14

any building in London anymore. Frankfurt was

1:06:16

on the precipice of taking over as

1:06:18

being the prime financial capital Europe

1:06:21

at the time. It was angling to do it and all

1:06:23

those banks were looking to jump

1:06:25

right at the time when the British went into negotiations.

1:06:28

So you know the IRA didn't notice at the time, it was kind

1:06:30

of reported but they didn't, maybe they weren't keeping

1:06:32

an eye on it to that point that it wasn't their main priority.

1:06:34

But like

1:06:35

how close, you know, Britain

1:06:37

wasn't going to face bankruptcy or anything, but how

1:06:39

close they were to kind of losing that prime position

1:06:41

in Europe financially

1:06:43

is something that's really worth thinking about.

1:06:46

And just to say like the final thing on that,

1:06:48

you know although there was some Zemtex using those bombs

1:06:50

that was that was homemade explosives, you know that was stuff

1:06:52

they could have done in 1970 in terms of like their capabilities.

1:06:55

So it's kind of mad to think like what

1:06:57

did the Libyan weapons actually do and some people

1:06:59

would argue that they

1:07:00

were just used as leverage in the negotiations.

1:07:03

Well the stat I came across, but again

1:07:05

how do you answer this properly like is that damn

1:07:08

near all of the bombs post 1987 contained

1:07:11

some amalgamation of Zemtex I guess.

1:07:13

But so they were still using the fertilizer

1:07:15

bombs then as they were still kind of the bread and butter.

1:07:18

Big time yeah.

1:07:21

As we winded down the interview I asked Geroge

1:07:23

if there was anything else he wanted to mention that hadn't

1:07:25

come up during her chat.

1:07:27

I'll just tell you like there's a funny anecdote,

1:07:29

it's not even funny anecdote, but it's an anecdote

1:07:32

about the accident

1:07:34

I was talking to someone about this

1:07:36

not too long ago.

1:07:38

One of the things that it actually did was it introduced

1:07:40

a kind of a problem

1:07:42

for the IRA

1:07:43

where people became lackadaisical

1:07:45

with their weapons.

1:07:47

So like before that there was such a premium

1:07:50

you know it was so rare to get

1:07:52

an assault rifle or a good weapon or something that

1:07:54

you'd use it again and again. So like let's say

1:07:56

you were

1:07:57

driving you know and you were bringing it somewhere to an arms

1:07:59

dollar.

1:07:59

And you might get you get caught by the guards

1:08:02

and that you

1:08:03

know They were able to trace that weapon to several different

1:08:05

crimes and then you go to jail for these things and you you

1:08:07

had nothing To do with it. So it was very dangerous,

1:08:09

you know to be caught with a wet a hot weapon basically

1:08:12

Yeah,

1:08:13

because of the accent or sorry because of

1:08:15

the shipments that came in pre accent People

1:08:18

were using weapons and throwing them away almost

1:08:20

and it actually had to come down from above like

1:08:22

that You can't do this. You know, you have you have to keep

1:08:24

these, you know

1:08:25

But that just shows how much

1:08:27

they had that you know for the first time in

1:08:29

their existence that they could just be like I don't

1:08:32

you know, I've used this once I don't want to be caught with this

1:08:34

because you know I shot a British soldier with it So

1:08:36

let's just dump it and there was it lads work

1:08:39

will run out eventually if you keep doing this

1:08:41

So why did why did they come to the peace table?

1:08:44

Why did they come to peace talks then for just four or five

1:08:46

six years later

1:08:47

if they were in such a strong position Yeah

1:08:49

my view like this just my

1:08:51

own personal view of it and you know

1:08:53

and I would disagree with you know, like other

1:08:56

people who've been on the podcast is I

1:08:59

Think

1:09:00

you look at people like

1:09:02

Jerry Adams Danny Morrison

1:09:04

their kids were in the early 20s

1:09:07

The lot of them at the time or teenagers

1:09:10

and they just said like we can't pass this

1:09:12

on to them You

1:09:13

know and that's something that I you know,

1:09:15

I struggle with sometimes and I talked to Republicans in

1:09:17

the south

1:09:18

Who saw they sold out. It's like well, you weren't living

1:09:20

there, you know, you weren't seeing your grandchildren

1:09:23

You know you grew up with it in the early 70s and now your grandchildren

1:09:25

are growing up with it You'd do anything to make

1:09:27

sure that doesn't happen, you know

1:09:29

And I don't think people account for the human

1:09:31

element enough of like, you know I mean

1:09:33

you talked to anyone who has kids, you know, and it's like

1:09:36

who's who would willingly pass that on to their children

1:09:38

You know growing up with that kind of horrific

1:09:41

just routine violence you know

1:09:43

was talking to a felon in Belfast there recently

1:09:46

and

1:09:46

The family friend

1:09:49

and he was talking about the Saracens showed a big

1:09:51

huge armored cars He says, you know They drive

1:09:54

them deliberately down the streets the narrow streets of the

1:09:56

cars parked on both sides and just tear the wind

1:09:58

the wing mirrors off You know and just destroy the cars

1:10:01

and they just do that for the crack.

1:10:02

And I was saying, and

1:10:04

I said, can you remind me what's a Saladin? Because I remember,

1:10:06

you know, that's another kind of armored car. And he just said, oh,

1:10:08

it's a Saracen with a .50 cal on top.

1:10:11

And he just think like, had

1:10:13

like, you know, a city Belfast and you've

1:10:15

a 19 year old who's in this thing

1:10:17

and he's sitting there with a heavy machine gun, a

1:10:20

belt fed, heavy machine gun truck. And you think

1:10:22

like, would you want your kids

1:10:24

to grow up seeing that and the danger

1:10:26

of that and a trigger hat? You know, so I

1:10:28

thought, personally, that's my view of

1:10:30

why it ended, you know?

1:10:34

That brings us to the end of my chat with Eric. If

1:10:38

you enjoyed hearing what he had to say, his

1:10:40

new book is called Abroad Church, volume

1:10:42

two,

1:10:43

the provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland,

1:10:45

1980 to 1989.

1:10:47

And you can get it over on irishacademicpress.ie.

1:10:51

The previous volume is also available to purchase there.

1:10:55

I really enjoyed this interview and

1:10:57

I want to take the time again to thank him for this very

1:10:59

eye opening and interesting chat.

1:11:02

If you enjoyed this episode, please do let me know and

1:11:04

I might have him on again for a chat. So

1:11:07

that's it from me. Thanks and

1:11:09

see you next time.

1:11:15

With easy to operate Husqvarna

1:11:17

residential zero turn mowers, you'll

1:11:19

actually enjoy mowing. Superior

1:11:21

performance, maneuverability and comfort

1:11:23

is what a great ride is all about. Learn

1:11:26

more at Wright Brothers Power

1:11:27

in Newark.