The Troubles: Return of the IRA (Part 3)

The Rest Is History

This episode explores the escalating violence and political crisis in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s, focusing on how British milit

Key takeaways

• The British military presence in Northern Ireland was initially intended as a temporary peacekeeping measure but quickly became entrenched, mirroring the U.S. experience in Vietnam.

Main topics

• The escalation of violence in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s
• British military intervention and its unintended consequences

Notable quotes

"Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam." – Senator Edward Kennedy, 1971

Conclusion

The episode underscores how the initial hope for peace in Northern Ireland collapsed into a protracted

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:03) Hello. Now, before we go to today's episode, I have some insanely exciting news for you. On Friday, the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be forming live at the South Bank Centre in London. And better yet, we will be doing something completely new, something that no one has ever heard before on The Rest Is History, the ultimate Victorian adventure. So Speaker 3 (0:28) to give you just a little taste, we will be in Africa. In 1868, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Theodore II, has kidnapped 59 Europeans and he is holding them hostage after descending into this demented rage because one of his fellow monarchs, Queen Victoria, has declined to answer his letters. I'm not making this up. And the British, after months and months of fruitless waiting... have lost patience and they have sent a military expedition under General Napier halfway around the world to save them. An expedition that includes thousands of mules, loads of elephants, and they've even had to build their own railway across the highlands of Abyssinia or Ethiopia to try to get to his mountain citadel. It is a bonkers story. Speaker 4 (1:20) Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary, full-blown British imperial epic. full of ludicrous behaviour, mad characters, colossal moustaches, everything that we love on The Rest Is History. It is, though I say so myself, a guaranteed classic in the making. So you're Speaker 3 (1:39) probably thinking, how can I get a ticket for this extraordinary Victorian adventure? Here is the answer. If you want to get a ticket for this event on Friday, the 4th of September, all you have to do is to go to therestishistory.com. It is as simple as that. You maybe have to part with some money, but it will be money very, very, very, very well spent. See you there. Speaker 4 (2:05) Hello. Now, before we go to today's episode, I have some insanely exciting news for you. On Friday, the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be forming live at the South Bank Centre in London. And better yet, we will be doing something completely new, something that no one has ever heard before on The Rest Is History, the ultimate Victorian adventure. So Speaker 3 (2:30) to give you just a little taste, we will be in Africa. In 1868, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Theodore II, has kidnapped 59 Europeans and he is holding them hostage after descending into this demented rage because one of his fellow monarchs, Queen Victoria, has declined to answer his letters. I'm not making this up. And the British... after months and months of fruitless waiting, have lost patience and they have sent a military expedition under General Napier halfway around the world to save them. An expedition that includes thousands of mules, loads of elephants, and they've even had to build their own railway across the highlands of Abyssinia or Ethiopia to try to get to his mountain citadel. It is a bonkers story. Speaker 4 (3:22) Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary, full-blown. British imperial epic full of ludicrous behaviour, mad characters, colossal moustaches, everything that we love on The Rest Is History. It is, though I say so myself, a guaranteed classic in the making. So you're probably thinking, Speaker 3 (3:42) how can I get a ticket for this extraordinary Victorian adventure? Here is the answer. If you want to get a ticket for this event on Friday, the 4th of September. All you have to do is to go to therestishistory.com. It is as simple as that. You maybe have to part with some money, but it will be money very, very, very, very well spent. See you there. Speaker 4 (4:15) Down through the centuries, the people of Ireland have been forced to wage a continuing and arduous struggle for freedom and equality. For generations, division and despair have scarred the countryside. Often alone, often without notice from others throughout the world, brave men and women of Ireland have given their lives for the principles they hold dear. Today, the Irish struggle again. The crisis now, however, is especially serious, because the Hade and Bidoners are taking a new and far more drastic turn. Ulster teeters on the brink of a civil war that threatens to engulf all of Ireland. The government of Ulster rules by bayonet and bloodshed. The soaring toll of death and violence is uncontrolled. Thousands flee their homes in terror. Businesses are bombed and factories closed down. Barbed wire roadblocks imprison every street corner. Young children stand on curb stones and shout shrill insults filled with hate. Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam. Speaker 4 (5:42) So that was Senator Edward Kennedy taking time off from driving young women into tidal ponds and then pretending it never happened to make a helpful intervention on the plight of Northern Ireland in the United States Congress on the 20th of October, 1971. And Dominic, this was a speech that went down in Britain like a cup of cold sick. Speaker 4 (6:10) I suppose the members of the British population who particularly enjoyed it were the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland itself. But having said that, it did go down very well with Catholics in Northern Ireland, didn't it? And indeed in Ireland more generally. Speaker 3 (6:23) Yeah, absolutely. So hello, everybody. That was a remarkable attempt on Ted Kennedy's voice there. I thought, ironically, given their antagonism... It actually Speaker 4 (6:32) sounded more like Jimmy Carter. Yeah, I know. I finally got there after months of practice. Speaker 3 (6:40) I was trying to make it nasal, and for some reason it went southern. It's great to have Jimmy Carter back on the show, isn't it? Anyway, so this speech, yeah, kicked off an absolute firestorm of controversy. So the British Embassy in Washington issued a kind of rare statement of rebuke. It said, our troops in Northern Ireland are there to stop murder and bloodshed. And actually, if a majority of people in Northern Ireland want to join the Republic of Ireland, we will not stand in their way. We're not holding them by bayonets and bullets and so on and so forth. Speaker 3 (7:09) Kennedy's intervention is a sign, I think, of just how toxic Northern Ireland had become for Britain, for the image of Great Britain in the early 1970s. And his comparison with Vietnam, which was incredibly controversial in late 1971, given what was happening in Vietnam, was it accurate? Well, it's not that far-fetched. So at this point, the end of 1971, about 200 people had been killed. Of course, nothing by the numbers being killed in Vietnam. But the spectacle of an army trapped in a quagmire, you know, where it's hard to tell friend from foe, where there's no political solution in sight. I mean, there's a lack of napalm, isn't there? There is a lack of napalm, but there is the sense of a conflict spiralling out of control and politicians haplessly struggling to keep up. I mean, there are definite dissimilarities, no question. Sure. But rather as the Americans, when they first went into Vietnam, thought, well, this will be done and dusted quite quickly and we'll be able to go home. Similarly, when the British sent in the army, as we heard last time, in the late summer of 1969, and of course they sent troops largely to protect the Catholic populations of Belfast and London Derry, they thought, well, hopefully we'll be home, not by Christmas, but within a few months. And the story of today's episode is how all of that went wrong. How did things become so bitter and so murderous so quickly in a way that would lead outside observers to make a comparison with what was going on in Vietnam? So let's kick off by reminding ourselves where we got to last time. So we had Northern Ireland established in the 1920s with this deep sort of fractalized Protestant majority, Catholic minority, the Catholic minority feeling they're treated like second-class citizens and everything from jobs to housing. In the first episode last week, we talked about how things started to spiral downhill in the mid-1960s. Terence O'Neill's attempts to modernize, Ian Paisley's inflammatory kind of rhetoric, the anniversary of the Easter Rising, the first killings by the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1966. And then last episode, the emergence of the Catholic Civil Rights Movement, this sort of increasing sense of confrontation. The Battle of the Bogside, as it was called in Derry, and Wilson and Callaghan agreeing to send in the troops. So let's pick up the story in the midsummer of 1970. And specifically, we're on the 21st of June. Now, Harold Wilson, with his shiny Gannocks raincoat, is out. He's gone. He's gone from the story. He has lost the election. He lost it three days earlier on the 18th of June. And so, Tom, we welcome back to the show a great yachtsman. A great organ scholar, but a man who hates a traditional Speaker 4 (9:57) county. And that man is Ted Heath. The worst man in history, apart from Jimmy Carter. You think Ted Heath is the worst Speaker 3 (10:03) man than Jimmy Carter? What he did to Rutland is unforgivable. Speaker 3 (10:09) Yeah. And the ridings. Mad counties. Mad counties. And Heath is personally to blame. I think that's the takeaway from this series. So Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party, has just won the general election. He hasn't talked at all about Northern Ireland. He's talked about overhauling the British economy to get rid of all the lame ducks in industry. Speaker 4 (10:29) But I mean, he's a conscious moderniser, isn't he? So he would have no interest in Northern Ireland, which he would see as a kind of antediluvian 17th century borg. Speaker 3 (10:36) Completely. Completely. And of course, he wants to be friendly to Britain's neighbours because he wants to get us into the common market. So Britain will join along with Ireland in 1973. Ted Heath, it would astound you to hear, given what we were saying about Britain's politicians in the last episodes, has absolutely no knowledge of Northern Ireland and no interest in it whatsoever. So on the 21st of June, which is where we're kicking off, the Cabinet Secretary, as the excellent name of Sir Burke Trend, Sir Burke Trend. Yeah, that's his name. That's an insane name. Well, that's his name. American style name. I'm never going to be rude about an American name again. So Sir Burke Trend sends him this briefing document and says, okay, this is the situation. You know, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about Northern Ireland. And Sir Burke says to him, it's now 10 months since we sent in the army and we hope to bring them home quickly. But obviously that ship has sailed. And he says there are basically two scenarios. The best case scenario is that things stay exactly as they are, and I quote, stabilised by the presence of British troops and trembling on the edge of disaster but never quite tipping over. And Bertrand says the downside is that it's going to be very expensive in terms of men and money. However, that's the rosy scenario. The worst possibility as follows. It could get worse and finally tip over the edge. The Northern Ireland government proving incapable of holding the position. Civil war breaking out within the province and Dublin being compelled to intervene. This would present us with a political and constitutional crisis of the first Speaker 4 (12:09) order. I mean, Dominic, you compared it, well, Edward Kennedy did, to Vietnam. Yeah. But actually, what it sounds like is Iraq or Afghanistan. The briefings that American presidents were probably getting in the wake of the attempt to stabilise those governments. Yeah, you're not wrong. Speaker 3 (12:29) And actually, as we will see, there are attempts to basically do a sort of general David Petraeus type surge. And Speaker 4 (12:38) there's similar kind of debates. Speaker 3 (12:40) Do we get out? Do we put in more troops? What do we do? Do we spend good money after bad, as it were? It's not a bad comparison at all. So that's the picture. But what Sir Bertrand and Ted Heath do not know is that at this point, a new factor is about to enter the equation. Speaker 3 (12:56) One group that we actually haven't talked about that much, which may surprise some listeners, is the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. And the reason that, as we've talked about before, they had this border campaign that failed by 1962. The leadership of the IRA abandoned guerrilla violence. They put on their polo necks and they turned to kind of Marxism and hanging around with academics. And they thought about... They thought that the future of this movement is a workers' alliance to beat capitalism as well as imperialism. And that meant that during all the disturbances in 1969 that we talked about last time, the IRA are actually quite quiet. And graffiti went up in Belfast that summer, IRA equals I ran away. Now, if you're an older IRA man, if you've been active in that guerrilla movement since, let's say, the 1940s, even longer. You are very embarrassed by this. In fact, you're positively furious. So these older IRA veterans, often they're kind of cultural conservatives, very strongly Catholic. They don't have any truck with the Marxism and whatnot. They're really fed up with this. They're like, why are we not getting stuck in? And then the other group who I think are really important are the younger militants, often in their late teens, early twenties, people who've seen action in the street fighting in Belfast and Derry in 1969. And they similarly think the IRA has basically vacated its historic role as the defender of the Catholic people of Northern Ireland. Someone should take up arms to defend our people against the loyalists and the RUC and all of this. And this comes to a head in December 1969. There's a secret meeting of disaffected IRA men in Belfast. And they agree that they will split from the Marxist leadership and they will set up their own rival IRA executive and army council, as they're called. And they call themselves the Provisional IRA, partly to echo the text of the proclamation in the Easter Rising of 1916, which had set up a provisional government of Ireland. And what happens to the original IRA? Well, they still hang around. They have the official IRA. And are they still a going concern today? They effectively wound up their operations in the early 1970s, but they are still active in the period of this series. So they have gunmen, they have weapons. They have seminars. Yeah. Well, they become radicalized to try and compete with the provisionals, actually. So they sort of take up the gun as well. But they end up merging, do they, basically? No, they don't merge. I mean, there's also the INLA, which we don't need to get into them. You know, this is the nature of paramilitary groups. They tend to splinter. Yeah, of course. So 10 days after this, so the provisional IRA issued their first public statements. And they said, we're going to defend our people in the north. We're going to fight for the full political freedom of Ireland. And then early January 1970, the political wing of the IRA, so it always had this allied political party called Sinn Féin, that split into official and provisional factions on the same lines. And of course, it's the, as anyone, who remembers the 1970s and 80s will know, it is the provisional IRA, the provos, that they are the people who dominate the headlines in Britain and in Ireland in the next 30 years or so. Speaker 4 (16:24) So just to talk about them, because they are the group that everyone Speaker 3 (16:27) knows as the IRA. A couple of really important points. Sometimes when you're reading about them, you will see people say, well, they were basically set up as a defensive organization. They were set up to defend Catholic communities from attacks by Protestant mobs in 1969. And that's where the provisionals came from. This is really just not true at all. So almost all of the original leaders of the provisionals, we'll talk about them a bit later, but a guy called Sean McSteafan, Ruria Brady, David O'Connell, Billy McKee. These are longstanding IRA men. These are people who have been in the IRA for 10, 20, 30 years. A lot of them have served time in prison in Britain or in Ireland. These are paramilitaries who believe in using force to get a united Ireland. Now, even younger people associated with the IRA come from longstanding Republican families. Let's look at one person who very vigorously denies that he was ever part of the IRA. Can you guess who this person is? Is this Gerry Adams by any chance? It Speaker 4 (17:36) is Gerry Adams, yes. So we're just putting on the record that he does deny he was in the IRA. He absolutely denies Speaker 3 (17:42) he was in the IRA. The strange thing about Gerry Adams is Gerry Adams denies that he was in the IRA, but every single academic historian who writes about this believes that he was. So it's hard to know who to believe there, Tom. So Gerry Adams was 21 years old when the provisionals were established. Jerry Adams himself has always said, I was drawn into Republican activism through the civil rights movement. I was radicalized to join Sinn Fein because I was so shocked by the loyalist violence. Speaker 4 (18:10) That's important, isn't it, for the framing of the message for American audiences? Because if you cast yourself as being on the side of the civil rights movement, I mean, who would object to that? Yeah, who would disagree with that? Now, it's important to say what Speaker 3 (18:22) Jerry Adams is saying here about being radicalized this way is just not true. Jerry Adams comes from a Republican family in West Belfast. His grandfather was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the 1920s. His father was in the IRA. His uncles were in the IRA. His father was jailed for an ambush on a police patrol. So let's assume that Jerry Adams is telling the truth, that he was never part of the IRA. The puzzle for me is why he wasn't, because given his background, it would be very strange for him not to have joined it, I would say. However, you know, it's a funny old world, isn't it? So maybe he wasn't. Now, the other point is about violence. The provisional IRA, unlike the say in the civil rights movement, are not interested in reforming the Stormont state. No, they want to destroy it, don't they? They want to destroy it. They want to bring down Stormont. They want to drive out the British and they want a united Ireland. And the way that they're going to do that is what they call euphemistically physical force. And that is violence. And they're completely upfront about that. So this is the Republican News in September 1970. It says, the Irish people should realise that British imperialists do not respect, fear or pay much attention to people who beg, grovel or crawl for favours or concessions. In other words, they only respect you if you fight back. Now, of course, the IRA say, and they say this throughout. There are going to be civilian casualties, but this is a war that is inevitable. It is worth it. We're going to be doing terrible things, but it is worth it to get what we want, and the end will justify the means. And that is why, when you get to the late 1990s, that is why the older Republicans often feel so betrayed by the Good Friday Agreement and the Speaker 4 (20:10) deal that the IRA ended up taking. And by the older Republicans, you mean people who are from a generation before? Speaker 3 (20:15) Yeah, but also people who've been in there since the 70s. If you joined in 1970, right, and you're 20 years old, you are, what, getting into your 50s, maybe, by the time it all comes to an end? And the best part of your life, you know, your prime years are behind you. And you've spent those prime years doing things that you know are terrible things. You have killed innocent people, but you did it because you believed the end justified the means and the end was a united Ireland. And now your leaders tell you... Actually, you did it so that you could get into coalition with Ian Paisley and run the water board. And you say, what? I mean, we waded through blood. We descended into hell. We basically sold our immortal souls for this. And that's why people feel so aggrieved when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness Speaker 4 (21:02) do the deal. I mean, you mentioned hell and immortal souls in that. I mean, do you mean that metaphorically? Or are we talking about people who genuinely... think that they have risked their immortal souls. I think there are quite a lot of people who are very pious Catholics. We know for a fact that a lot of IRA men Speaker 3 (21:20) were pious Catholics. I mean, they believe in this stuff. They Speaker 4 (21:23) live in Speaker 3 (21:23) a world where they're surrounded by religious iconography. The iconography of the Irish Republican movement is very, very heavily Catholic. I think when you read interviews with people, when they're looking back at their lives, they're looking back at what they did, they're... Obviously, they're steeped in a kind of religious culture. And I think a lot of people did feel, we did terrible things, but we did it in the name of a greater good. And we've been sold out. I mean, this obviously always puzzles people. Why did the continuity IRA or the real IRA or whatever, why didn't they just get around the table and accept the Good Friday Agreement? Well, I think this is why, because they just felt betrayed. Anyway, we're jumping ahead too much. Back to early 1970. So they've been set up, the provisionals, their priorities to get guns, and they have powerful friends to help them do it. So first of all, they have friends in the Republic of Ireland. This is an extraordinary story, actually. I don't think it's terribly well known in Britain. In 1969, the Irish government had put aside £100,000 as a sort of relief fund for Catholic families driven from their homes in the north. And basically... At least two Irish government ministers, so Charles Hockey, later the Prime Minister of Ireland, the boss, the Taoiseach, yeah, and a guy called Neil Blaney, they collaborated with a Belgian businessman who had been in the SS. To use this money, they diverted the money to buy guns in West Germany and they smuggled them to the IRA. This was a huge deal in the Republic of Ireland. There's a huge court case about it. And then the other place is America. Of course, lots of Irish Americans, lots of Irish Americans with very sort of misty-eyed memories of the old country and instinctive suspicion and dislike