Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 246 - The Troubles Part 4

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

The conclusion to The Troubles series Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Listen to the Beneath The Skin Podcast: https://twitter.com/BeneathSkinPod Follow Tom on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gotitatguineys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad free and is totally supporter driven we use that money to pay our bills buy research materials that make this show possible and support charities like the red crescent the flint water fund and the halo trust consider joining the legion of the old crow

today and now back to the show hello and welcome to the lions led by donkeys podcast i am not joe once again it is tom for the final time uh with me is joe hello joe hello um yeah it's been a it's been a long road for we well four weeks if you're listening it's been more than four weeks if you're us it's been like what like five months yeah because like we've been recording over the holiday season where we both jumped around in different countries. I'm currently recording on a stacked up pile of suitcases here in an extra bedroom in an Airbnb. It's been a twisting turning road to get to the final of the series. I actually think of all of the series we've ever done, of which has been several with very weird production switch ups in them there's more countries traveled during these four episodes than any previous series we've ever done yeah like i went home to ireland during christmas and then i think that

was it for me and if this had gone on an extra week, it would have included Wales as well. I mean, then we'd have to speak in a language that is completely incomprehensible to the human ear. What if you made a language that didn't have any vowels in it? What if Icelandic, but from the swamp? I mean, we can't really make fun of

the Welsh language when the Armenian language is written like that. I mean, it's mostly just using W's it's fine um it totally makes sense if you're brain damaged like i am uh and also the entire country for media what if you taught a entire country how to speak using cocoa melon yeah uh it's it's great i actually i if i would take out how many countries I traveled during this series. So obviously over the holidays, I went to the UK and worked in London with Nate there in the studio. Then I went back to Armenia. We continued to record while I was in Armenia.

Now I'm in Portugal and we're finishing the conclusion here. And you were in Germany as well. That was just a layover though. That was an extended layover because when you fly out of Armenia occasionally they'll be like, ah yes, you only have one stop. It's overnight and no, you can't leave the airport. Like, rad, thanks. No, Joe was not making links with the Neubauter Meinhof.

I cannot confirm or deny the terror polycule that I'm a member of. But if you've made it this far, you have listened to the past three episodes on our history of the Troubles. If you have not and you're just somehow hearing this episode, go back and listen to the past three episodes.

It'll make everything we're about to talk about so much more understandable. But where we left off last episode everything we're about to talk about so much more understandable but where we left off last episode we talked about bloody sunday and going into the 70s and we talked briefly about the hunger strikes but what we need to do is to take a step back and take a step back briefly into the 70s in the dwindling months of the 70s because on august 27th 1979 a bank holiday had dawned sunny following days of rain and dickie mountbatten and some of his family who had been staying at their holiday hold up hold up dickie yeah dickie mountbatten dickie is it his first name is dickie is that

is that what he goes by i i would assume in familial terms i know he was considered quite a mentor to the current king charles so i assume it must have been like standing i'm sure that won't have any dire implications as we go forward no not at all in form and if he's at a formal dinner does he go by dicks dick maybe richard i don't know um but they had been staying at their holiday home in class of bond castle near the village of cliff offney near county sligo in the republic of ireland and they decided to take an outing on their boat to take in the good weather at 11 30 a.m mountbatten boarded shadow five or shadow v depending on what way you want to say it, along

with his daughter Patricia and their film producer and her film producer husband John, John's mother, Doreen Knatchbull, Lady Brauburn, and Patricia's 14-year-old twins, Nicholas and Timothy, together with 15-year-old Paul Maxwell,

who holidayed in the village and helped with the boat. With two Gardaí detectives following and helped with the boat with two Gardie detectives following the progress of the boat through binoculars from the shore, the boat cleared the harbour and headed for an open bay. Mountbatten standing tall at the wheel opened the throttle to gain speed also watching the progress of the

boat through a pair of binoculars with another two pairs of eyes belonging to the provisional IRA I love this fucking story so much. You know what they call this? A good start. A good start. At exactly 11.45am, just as the boat reached the lobster pots a few hundred yards away

from the clifftop overlooking the bay, the provisional IRA team pressed the button which activated the bomb they had planted on the boat moored in the bay the night before 50 pounds of gelatinite exploded sending shares of timber metal cushions life jackets and shoes into the air immediately afterwards there was a deadly silence i'm gonna need you to splice in thehop's iron right about now what did the lobsters know what did the lobsters know what did mr mr crabs is involved um but according to an eyewitness the boat was there one minute and the next minute it was like a lot of matchsticks floating in the water the party the party of seven aboard the shadow included Mountbatten and the previously stated parties. Lady Bradbourne died the next day and others survived various injuries, but Mountbatten, Nicholas and Maxwell were killed immediately. severed and most of his clothes ripped off in the blast except for a fragment of his long sleeve jersey with the badge of the hms kelly on the front was found floating downwards in the water

and normally the only other people ever saw him like that were underage boys so this is a nice change of pace i'm gonna explain that joke in a second uh the longtime listeners of the show will know that we talked a little bit about mount mount benton's uh peculiarities uh during a previous episode that we got a lot of canadian historians very mad at us about so but that explosion wasn't the only carnage of the day later that afternoon 18 british soldiers were killed near the irish border at warren point in an ira bombing ambush it was the single heaviest death toll for the british army in the 10 years since had been sent to quell the fighting between the catholic and protestant communities according to the times correct me

if i'm wrong this is because i know we don't really go too much into these individual attacks since we have so much to cover but this is in the era where the ira uh had kind of developed um like setting decoy bombs and setting one bomb off and knowing how the british soldiers would react so they'd have a bigger bomb like for instance and the same thing happened to us in afghanistan iraq uh where they would set a bomb off obviously that wouldn't be a decoy or anything but it'd go off and they would know exactly how the soldiers would react yep and for fun fact and there is anecdotal evidence that suggests that the CIA used connections in the IRA between the from the boston mob to send ira members to train the muhajir deen in afghanistan look i'm as surprised as everybody else listening that the cia just popped up our third co-host of

the show and sponsor uh depending on who you believe does that surprise me that the cia pops up of course it fucking does it i mean like to be honest you know i feel like there's probably some you know taliban fire who planted a bomb that absolutely rocked the shit out of your amrap in afghanistan who like had the surname o'brien yeah like and you can tell it's one of the ira trained uh muzha hadin because after my amrap gets blown up he was here for the mountainside like oh you like that you wee cunt but mountbatten was both a sentimental and symbolic target he was one of the most respected members of the royal family and was a serving mentor to the then prince charles now king charles um mountbatten was also an easy target the bomb had been placed in his unguarded boat the night before the murder. He had been

vacationing in the Irish town of Mulligmore throughout the 1970s and had refused a security detail despite repeated threats from the Provisional IRA to assassinate him. Mountbatten had declared Jesus Christ. Who the hell would want to

kill an old man anyway? I mean, it's Mount... this is where i say well it's mount batten so me but i feel like i can't legally say that uh so i have to add that one out but like i don't that's so incredibly fucking stupid he's a member of the royal family he's vacationing i mean not in northern ireland right he's in the Republic of Ireland. But he, like Sligo is extremely close. Sligo is extremely close to the border. And he's a noted famous person, hero from World War II,

despite the fact he did not fucking deserve it. And not to mention, well known within Irish circles for other things that would make Irish people really not fucking like him. Yeah. I mean, like if you once again like a soldier f it here is some information that you could use to find out things if you look up the kinkora boys home affair and uh type in in uh inverted commas lord mountbatten i feel like

you'll find some things now in our protection here he's dead so we can't libel him true so yeah so sucks to suck you dead fuck so yeah lord mountbatten was implicated in a massive uh child sex abuse scandal in the north of ireland um it was kind of brushed under the rug you know at the time he didn't have much uh involvement but since there has been more evidence to say that he was involved in a child sex abuse ring at the time is now like i don't want to say that he was targeted by the ira because he's a pedophile but like did they did the ira know or were they just targeting because he was fucking mountbatten i'd say more than likely they did know because the kinkora boys school uh boys home affair occurred over such a long time that there was probably young men

involved in provisional ira activities who had been in the kinkora homes jesus christ and well in that case revenge is a motherfucker so sometimes revenge comes in the in the form of spicy jello planted on your boat i would also like to point out that just you know there was conspicuously a 15 year old boy who accompanied them on the boat who was of no relation to the family or had any you know familial links or professional links he was just you know helping out on the boat. Oh, nothing suspicious there at all. I mean, it sucks for that kid.

Like, obviously, you're making jokes about Mountbatten getting turned into blood, shit, and piss, but like, you know, that sucks. Yeah. You know, the kids that died, it is very unfortunate, but you know, it is what it is. But next, we need to discuss one of the

extremely pivotal moments in the troubles which is the hunger strikes and to understand the hunger strikes we need to take a 30 year jump back or a 20 year jump back to discuss someone who a lot of people have probably been expecting to be covered in this episode bobby sands so uh famed restaurateur in iran yeah great burgers for people for people are unaware there is a chain of restaurants in iran named after bobby sands a man who died during a hunger strike but funnily enough a friend of mine is married to a woman from tehran and have you heard the story about the british embassy in tehran not particularly no so essentially what happened is people replaced the street signs on the street where the entrance to the british embassy in tehran is with signs that said bobby sand street to the point where the net

the street was officially renamed bobby sand Street and the British Embassy had to change the side of the side that the building was entered in. That whips. So Sands was born in Dunmurray in 1945 to John and Rosaline Sands.

After marrying, they relocated to a new development of Abbots cross newtown abbey county antrim outside north belfast in 1961 after experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbors the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby rathcool development now if you've listened to earlier episodes you can understand the housing discrimination that went on in terms of accessing public housing and i can imagine rath cool was 30 catholic and featured catholic schools as well as a nominally catholic but religiously mixed

youth football club um stella maris and the same uh with the same name as the school Sands attended where the training was held. But by 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of the Belfast metropolitan area, had considerably worsened and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege. Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him and he quickly learned to associate with only Catholics. He left school in 1969 at the age of 15 and enrolled in Newtown Abbey Technical College beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander Coachworks in 1970. He worked there for less than a year enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers which according to several co-workers he ignored completely as he wished to learn a meaningful trade he was

eventually confronted after leaving his shift in january 1971 by a number of his co-workers wearing armbands of the local ulster loyalist gang and he was held at gunpoint and told that alexander's was off limits to fenian scum quote unquote fenian scum so this is not like the uvf this is like a street gang that's kind of allied with them yeah pretty much okay um and was told never to come back if he valued his life he later said that this event was the point at which he decided that milland militancy was the only solution in late 1971 while working as a barman in the Glen Inn, Sands approached a man who he knew to be connected to the IRA and told him he would like to join.

The man told Bobby to think it over as things in Rathcool were bad and Catholics in the area were very isolated and would put him and his family in danger. Later that year, the same man from the pub spotted Bobby playing football on a pitch near the Sands house. As an initiation he asked Sands to transport a gun from Rathcool to Glen Gormley because the local IRA volunteer who was supposed to do so due to the job had failed to show up. Bobby left the game on the spot, changed his clothes

and took the gun. This is where Bobby Sands involvement in the IRA began in earnest. And how old is he at this point? I assume quite young. So he is in his uh he's like 17 18 he was born in 54 this is 71 so okay he's 17 yeah i mean i mean the ira picked up people that were quite young like younger than that though sometimes right yeah yeah so generally like we talked about in the writing during bloody Sunday and other writing that went on afterwards, they generally recruited younger men because what would happen is older men would, you know, you have work, you attract people who don't have any attachment

to familial toys or a job or whatever it's much easier to get them to do what you want yeah that doesn't surprise me i mean get it and not to mention the younger it's going to be really hard to get a guy in his like 30s to give up effectively his life to go do militant shit when he's got like a family and he's set in his ways it's a lot it's a lot easier to get some angry kids to go do it yeah 100 so in june 1972 bobby's parents were attacked and their house was damaged by a loyalist mob and they were forced to move once again this time to the heavily catholic of West Belfast, specifically the area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, joined them. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole

by violence, intimidation, although there were some that remained. Sands was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying. Sands was convicted in April 1973 and sentenced to five years imprisonment although released in April 1976. Upon his release he returned to his family home in West Belfast and resumed his active role in the Provost. Sands and Joe Macdonald planned the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dun Murray on the 14th of October 1976. The showroom was completely destroyed, but as the IRA men left the scene, there was a gun battle between them and the RUC.

Leaving behind two wounded, the remaining four tried to escape by car but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car and on october 7th 1977 the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver they were not charged with the explosive uh offenses i was gonna say 14 years for a bomb attack and a running gun battle with the police is a solid fucking bargain it's not bad it's not bad um but immediately 14 years in prison sucks but you know if you're gonna get in a running gun battle with police and only get 14 years that's that i call that a win yeah what do you but you know if you're gonna take a bargain that's a bargain that you can take yeah um immediately after his sentencing sans was implicated in a fight in the prison sent

to the punishment block in crumlin road Prison. The cells containing a bed, a mattress, a chamber pot, and a water container, books, radios, and other personal items were not permitted, although a Bible and some Catholic pamphlets were provided. Sands refused to wear a fucking chamber pot. Yep. Sands refused

to wear a prison uniform, so was kept naked in his cell for 22 days without access to bedding from 7 30 a.m to 8 30 p.m every day now correct me if i'm wrong here he and others like him refuse to wear the prison uniform because they consider themselves prisoners of war correct yeah okay that makes sense like putting on a regular prisoner's uniform is accepting what they did as a criminal act rather than like rather than being soldiers yeah yeah so like they saw themselves as prisoners of war so they should be afforded the rights that are generally guarded under the is it the prisoner

of war act in the geneva convention yeah it's like you have the right to retain your uniform, retain a chain of command, and your officers and NCOs are still in charge of the POW formation. They're the ones that talk to the prison guards, prison commanders. And there's certain other rights that are afforded prisoners of war that are significantly outside the bounds i will say of

a normal incarceration is in the uk and especially in the united states yeah so uh the use of hunger strike as a form of protest has a long tradition in british and irish prisons for example the lord mayor of cork terence mcsweeney died whilst on hunger strike in brixton prison in 1920 in the early years of the troubles a hunger strike in crumlin jail in 1972 by republican and some loyalist prisoners resulting in the granting of special category status for political prisoners but it was the removal of this status in 1976 which led to five years of protests such as the one that Bobby Sands was undertaking but this included the blanket protest

and the no wash protest a hunger strike in 1980 was also undertaken by seven men in the H blocks and three women in Armagh prison but it was ended on the 18th of December without any gains from the prisoners. But in 1981 the hunger

strike marked the escalation of the five year protest by Irish Republican prisoners in response to the withdrawal of special category status for political prisoners in 1976. And part of this was like the dirty protest right? Like where they covered themselves in shit.

Oh, we're getting there. We're getting there. Okay, perfect. The aim of the 1981 hunger strike was the reinstatement of political status for Republican prisoners and the block of cells, the right not to do prison work, the right to educational recreational facilities and the restoration of lost remission of sentence. So that was their five remission of sentence. What's that mean?

Um, so that I think that is the reduction of sentence in terms of a time served. So if you had been in, if you have been imprisoned during your sentencing and during the court date, that would be the commution of your sentence down to a shorter time. So the 1981 hunger strike began on the 1st of March 1981

when Bobby Sands, who was now the officer commanding in the H blocks, refused food. He was followed on strike by 22 men, each joining one at a time at staggered intervals. On April 9th, while still on hunger strike, Sands was elected a Westminster MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in a by-election,

which served to focus the world's media on the hunger strike. Another hunger striker, Kieran Doherty was elected as a td to the doll which is a member of parliament in the parliament of ireland um however despite international pressure then mar then prime minister margaret thatcher refused to grant concessions so you know the iron lady once again so i mean this is something that's kind of not necessarily common right like there's been numerous ira or shin fein people who were elected and they just refuse to take their seats right yeah so the general shin fein um party line is that you don't take your seats in westminster if you are elected an mp

and if you are elected in stormont which is the parliament of north of ireland because of the devolved political process which we'll get to at the very end of this episode and you have to enter into like a power sharing agreement between uh unionist parties and republican parties. So they don't take their seats there either. Yeah, like Bernadette Devlin is one of the few very hardline republican ministers who's actually taken, or member of parliament who's actually taken their seat.

But on the 5th of May, after 66 days on hunger strike, Bobby Sands died. Nine further men, six IRA and three INLA, were to die during the hunger strike before it was called off on the 3rd of October. By this stage of the protest, the families of the hunger strikers had begun to intervene to prevent further deaths. Three days later, the government announced a series of concessions to the prisoners which granted their right to wear their own clothes although these concessions did not formally grant the prisoners political status they did meet many aspects of the five demands like i know it's we're talking about the thatcher government here so saying like how could they

feasibly just sit there while people starve to death like i it's a soulless horrible government so i guess the easy answer to that is like they didn't fucking care but like public publicly how is this explained to be okay like it's easy for like margaret thatcher to not give a fuck about starving members of the ira like that doesn't shock me even a little bit politically at all but like how did this get sold to the general public because i know this is in newspapers constantly during the time right like this is a very publicly known thing i think i think it's partially because both on the island of ireland and in the uk there was constant reporting on what was going on in northern ireland and i think

it was a little bit like a car crash, it was a travel a tragedy unfolding before people's eyes and it was so shocking that the general public were outraged by it but they didn't do anything. Like when you look at... Weird how that keeps happening. Yeah, when you look at the

political climate of the Thatcher years it was just the public being hammered constantly by the government over and over again on every point that they could and it just happened i mean was there any kind of framing of like these people are terrorists why would we care like what like what you would see in the u.s and like guantanamo bay there was like a huge media push by certain sections of the media that like these people are terrorists they are trying to destabilize great britain blah blah blah in order to discredit their efforts and

that in part fueled the anti-irish sentiment in the uk in general during the 80s um obviously everyone who's listening has probably heard of the signs that said you know no blacks no dogs no irish that were featured in pubs in the uk and it's that was in the 80s oh yeah that was like well into the 80s jesus christ i mean at the same time i mean of course i don't mean to say this as as like well this kind of makes sense but during the 80s there's an extensive bombing campaign within the uk as well right so we'll get there joe we're gonna get there so like it it kind of like i'm not saying it makes sense and that the racists were right i'm just saying like to see this kind of disregard for human decency doesn't surprise me um when i saw how americans reacted through like very like

obvious terrorist attacks like I grew up when 9-11 happened and a few others but like the see the one like the people that you wouldn't expect to believe heinous shit like fuck them put them in camps and shit like that that quick 180 of just a complete deletion

of any kind of human compassion is so quick it doesn't surprise me that people are like seeing members of the ira starve to death like yeah fuck them i don't care well joe you know in the short term the calling off the hunger strike was billed by the british press as a victory for thatcher and a defeat of the provisional ira however in the long term the hunger strike boosted support for the recruitment of the provisional IRA. The Republican movement gained a great deal of international sympathy and Bobby Sands became known as an Irish Republican martyr with 100,000 people lining the room of his funeral. victory was a key catalyst for Sinn Féin's move towards electoral politics and its emergence as a mainstream political party in Northern Ireland and eventually the Republic of Ireland.

And I just want to take a second here to we mentioned, you know, the Provisional IRA, the IRA. They're two very different parties, right? Yeah. Northern Irish Sinn Féin and the Republican of Ireland Sinn Féin are two very different things. Well, I think it is also down to the fact that Northern Ireland is, in a lot of ways, very different culturally from the Republic of Ireland, but is also quite similar.

So there is similarities and differences. And I think Northern Ireland politics applies to Northern Ireland in the same way Republic of Ireland politics applies just in the Republic of Ireland. There is cross-border issues that apply to every party that exists on both sides of the border, but it's the same way as how

Irish Labour is very different from British Labour. Right, okay. They're both shit, but you know. But we've mentioned you know the ira the provisional ira the inla essentially what all of these groups they originate from splits that originated in the 60s with the original ira so the ir, as it is just named IRA, like we said, the provost split from the IRA because of the original IRA's unwillingness to use violence in order to achieve the political means.

The INLA took a very socialist Republican slant, so much more in line with the labor movement of the 1910s. So we're talking about Jim Lark and James Connolly. Much more, you know, some would say Trotskyist, but that's up for debate. Then you have stuff like the continuity IRA, which emerged in the 80s. That is, all of these people claim to be the continuation of the original ira of course yeah but the continuity ira got it in the name you know they got the branding right

i i don't think that we should handle this in any way that people have any question of what we believe uh so let's just let fuck a decent naming convention uh Let's just use all of the subtlety of a fist made out of pure ham. Yeah. And then you have, which we'll get to towards the end of the episode, the emergence of other groups. But like we discussed. This kind of continues to this day. There's still splinter groups that exist.

Yeah, pretty much. But like we discussed at the end of the previous episode, the Long Cash, or as it had been renamed, Her Majesty's Maze Prison, became an important training ground for the UDA, UVF, and the IRA prisoners. Her Majesty's Maze Prison sounds like the setting of a dystopian teen film where they have to try to get out in like 30 days or less or something yeah so the maze prison

it was made up of prison blocks that were in the shape of H's so and there was walls in between each H block so the hunger strikes that Bobby Sands participated in was in what was the long cache is now the maze prison or was

the maze prison but you know it became like we said at the end of last episode a key training ground for both sides of the paramilitary conflict they always do baby they always do so by the

end of 1982 several if not most members of both sides high army command were imprisoned in the long cash i prefer the long cash i think it's a better name long cash is that long cash sounds pretty great it's like recently in a history of armenia bonus episode there was a tower of oblivion and like and there were there there was a secondary name that was like oh the the fortress prison like no i'm calling this the tower of oblivion because it sounds ominous as fuck like if i was saying like i'm sending you to long cash you'd be like oh god no if i like you're going to her

majesty's prison maze or whatever like yeah yeah right whatever um they were mostly still able to communicate with the outside and were able to coordinate or they were able to continue directing subordinates to undertake bombings assassinations and coordinating the operation of a functioning paramilitary but soon there was a plan coming together among the ira prisoners about the possibility of escape. So we're going to have everything in this episode. Outstanding. The prisoners initially engaged

in a charm offensive to build a camaraderie with prison officers, getting to know them on a first name basis and harvesting information. High ranking IRA members served as janitorial orderlies

using that camaraderie to gain greater access around jail. even being permitted to perform cleaning duties inside the Circle, which was the nerve center located in the middle of H Block. How dumb. I mean, I know prison guards are so far down on the ladder of dumb cops and like British prison guards are just another layer of dumb cops. cops and like british prison guards are just another layer of dumb cops but how fucking stupid do you have to be to be running a prison made specifically for members of a fucking militant organization and like yeah i'm gonna go ahead and let them in the fucking control area this sounds like a good idea once again because only losers become uh prison officers they have no friends this prisoner really i bet he he actually likes me because i i'm one of the cool prison guards uh he said he wants to see my gundam collection

yeah yeah he wants it he wants to talk to me about how like gundam seed was actually one of the good series meanwhile this poor this poor irish motherfucker is like this guy will not stop talking this lonely old fucking asshole will not stop talking this lonely old fucking asshole will not stop talking my ear off for hours they pretend to mop like this better be worth it just like really wearing through the floor mopping the same circle over and over again for hours i'm gonna pack so much gelatin explosive into a toothbrush and kill you with it? Knowing that officers only carried batons for self-defense, the inmates smuggled six handguns with silencers

and knives inside the prison. Although it's still not known how. How the fuck did they smuggle in half a dozen guns into, again, a prison built specifically for the IRA? Oh no if if you want to learn about the iras just you know ingenuity and in prison smuggling you should look up port leash

prison which was a high security prison in ireland so after taking control of the hboc at gunpoint the prisoners planned to hijack a food delivery truck, which they learned was not searched when entering or exiting the prison. Unfortunately for them, they found that it was full of British food and they quickly had to abandon it. Spotted dick everywhere.

Having decided to stage the breakout on a Sunday, the quietest day of the week, with the fewest staff on duty, the IRA leaders set September the 24th, 1983 as their day of the week with the fewest staff on duty the ira leaders set september the 24th 1983 as their day of the great escape that afternoon five ira prisoners entered the circle of h block 7 to carry out their cleaning duties everything appeared routine until shortly after 2 30 p.m when brendan mcfarland who had succeeded sands as the commanding IRA officer inside of the maze, called out, bumper.

Hearing the prearranged co-word, the inmate orderlies flashed their guns and overpowered the unarmed prison guards. Since officers regularly- Everybody all at once bends over and goes knuckle deep into their own asshole to pull out their smuggled guns. We've got them now, lads! asshole to pull out their smuggled guns we've got them now lads um similarly officers regularly kept their solid bulletproof door to the control room open for ventilation purposes sure why not why the fuck not due to a prison design flaw an inmate identified by guards as jerry kelly was

able to point his gun through the grill gate at Officer John Adams. Kelly ordered Adams to step away from the room's radio, alarm, and telephone systems and lie on the ground with his hands behind his head. He said, I have nothing to lose. You know what I'm in for. And Kelly, who was serving two life sentences in connection with a deadly IRA bombing in London, got control of the control room. Yeah, I mean, if I was a prison guard and there was like a like effectively a still alive IRA martyr with a gun point on my face, like, look, man,

I'll tell you where my kids live, like whatever you need, man. Yeah. So when a guard unexpectedly walked out of a nearby restroom and distracted by the prisoners, Adams attempted to raise the alarm. According to Adams, Kelly then fired two shots, the second of which struck him above his left eye, but proved not to be fatal. Kelly has never admitted to pulling the trigger, by the way. So was it the guy who just like meanders out of the shitter that gets shot in the face? No, no. Adams, who is on the floor of the shitter that gets shot in the face no no adams who is on the floor of the control room got shot in the face yeah we'll let that be a lesson to you as the five orderlies secured the circle lookouts in a direct line of sight entered each of the blocks four wings and attacked guards with weapons that included a gun knife screwdriver and hammer

within minutes the ira took complete control of H Block 7 from the 24 officers on duty. The only thing that truly shocked the prison guards is the one guy swinging the goat around by his feet. I pulled the short straw. I had to hit people with the goat. Yeah, there's a guy in a port leash who's playing goat simulator.

One guy, he has like a sharpened broomstick riding a goat, like the IRA cavalry just storming down the tiers. So after confining prison officials to a pair of game rooms, the inmates ordered a dozen of them to remove their uniforms, which they then put on. The IRA members then bound the guards placed pillowcases over their heads and issued a warning this is the ira operation we're not here for for revenge or to punish you over the hunger strikes but if you interfere with the escape you will be dealt with swiftly i do have to say it is quite shocking this didn't turn into like a death squad type situation for all the pent-up aggravation these guys had like like we've said before you do not in fact have to hand it to anybody involved in the story but that is an amazing level of self-control the prisoners

hijacked the food delivery truck when it arrived at 3 25 p.m but their gateway their getaway was delayed as ira intelligence officers spent valuable valuable minutes rummaging through prison files in search of details about informers while also removing any photographs and documents they could to aid their own recapture. That's quite smart. At 3.50pm 37 prisoners piled into the back

of a food truck while Kelly laid in the passenger side footwell with a gun directed at the officer driving the van to ensure his compliance while driving to the main gate the last obstacle to freedom at the gate nine of the prisoners disguised as guards stormed the lodge where

officers checked in and out and seized them at gunpoint the delay in leaving H block however meant that the guards were beginning to arrive for their next shifts as their numbers grew the officers fought back against the inmates amid the melee they have guns just shoot them i mean you you have 24 police officers arriving i mean like maybe it's because like they didn't want this to turn into a mass murder situation because you know yeah once again i think they did exercise some level of self-control because

they realized that it could get bad very quickly if even one person was able to raise an alarm with the ruc so i think they right smart choice probably didn't have enough ammunition for a sustained gun battle with the rfc they only had the a couple bullets that could be smuggled in via goat ass or whatever like they don't exactly have a cachet at the moment. Amid the melee, a prison officer named James Ferris bolted from the lodge and shouted to the guard at the pedestrian gate to sound the alarm. A prisoner,

identified by guards as Dermot Finucane, gave Chase and stabbed Ferris three times in the chest. The officer collapsed and later died from a heart attack. The prisoner, meanwhile, continued to the pedestrian gate. St times with a fucking chest and died of a heart attack it was tragic that sounds like that investigation was conducted by the ira police department so finucane continued to the pedestrian gate where he stabbed two officers

arriving for their shifts as well as the officer on gate duty before they could stand the alarm so this guy was like running like the guy in terminator 2 you know with a knife towards this security gate just going to ham with like a tiny kitchen knife on guys because like i imagine it's not like a giant butcher's knife or whatever but like how is nobody taking this guy down? He's now stabbed multiple people. And it's like a shitty action film where every prison guards will be going at him one at a time or something. The guard is just like fumbling with his gun and it's like falling out of his hands.

When the quick thinking guards wedged their cars between the prison gates to block the food trucks path, the inmates opened the opened the vehicle's door and fled on foot scaling the exterior fence to freedom while some escapees hijacked cars other fled on foot into the countryside a massive manhunt was conducted by police and the military and resulted in the recapture of 19 prisoners in the first 24 hours most of the fugitives were returned to their original cells inside H Block 7 after a brief flicker of freedom. Those who remained on the lam hid inside barns and safe houses

before the IRA facilitated their passage to the Republic of Ireland. Several continued on in the United States under new identities while others resumed their paramilitary activities. Three of the fugitives subsequently died in IRA operations, while Kelly and McFarland were arrested in Holland in 1986 and returned to the maze along with several other escapees

extradited from Ireland and the United States. I was going to say, was the Republic of Ireland considered a safe spot for these guys? Like, was the Irish government kind of like turning a blind eye? It's, it's cross border jurisdiction. So essentially like the way the police can chase you across state lines. Um, it's kind of like that.

But like if, if you're, if you make it into the Republic of Ireland and you're saying you're one of these guys who just was like stabbing your way through British prison guards, uh, like, and the, the Republic republic the irish republican government the republic of ireland government i should say uh like kind of knows you're in

ireland are you being extradited to back to england or not really like if if they got you they probably would hand you over but it was a case of it was very easy to disappear okay like once you're over the border be cool and we're cool otherwise we'll send your ass back to the uk so as shin fein were launching back into the public spotlight it began to rapidly increase its electoral mandate in november 1983 jerry adams mp had become its president and he success he was successfully steering it back into mainstream politics. The UK and Irish governments were very concerned that Sinn Féin's extreme republican ideas would steal voters away from the more moderate nationalist party the SDLP. The SDLP was also

concerned about this and appealed to the Irish government for support. The SDLP leader John Hume managed to persuade the Irish governments to create a government for support. The SDL Peter John Hume managed to persuade the Irish government to create a forum for discussing the future of both parts of Ireland. Called the New Ireland Forum, it first met in the summer of 1983 and was to produce a report. However, all the unionists

along with the UK government and Sinn Féin boycotted it. This left the SDLP and the Irish government as the only parties present. Nevertheless, the forum went ahead and debated the future of Ireland. The new Ireland forum report was published on May 1984 and suggested three scenarios for the future

of the island. A. United Ireland. B. A Confederation of Northern Ireland and the Republic. Or C. Joint Authority over Northern Ireland. This did not go down well. Joint Authority sounds like a fucking nightmare. So that did not go down well, and taking matters into their own hands,

on the 12th of October, 1984, the IRA detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet were staying during the Conservative Party Conference. As part of the hotel collapsed, five people were killed, several MPs seriously injured, and Ms. Thatcher was lucky to escape alive. The IRA released... The rest of us were unlucky that she managed to escape alive.

Yep. The IRA released a chilling statement saying, You were lucky this time, but remember, we only have to be lucky once. Yes. That shit fucking rules. Shortly afterwards, Ms. Thatcher firmly rejected the NIF's report

with a firm no, no, no to the three alternatives. While this response satisfied unionists, it was disappointing to the SDLP who were attempting to try and find a middle ground, a middle ground solution

that would end the violence. However, the UK realized that the problems in Northern Ireland were not going to stop until a settlement could be reached. So they began secret negotiations with the Irish government as early as 1985 to try and find some common ground for working on. They succeeded in finding some common ground and on 15 November 1985 the two governments made public what they had agreed upon. A. The UK government recognised the Irish Republic's right to make a proposal concerning Northern Ireland.

B. The Irish Republic recognised that a united Ireland was a long-term objective and that it could only be achieved through majority consent. C. The two governments were to set up a conference between them to discuss issues of mutual interest and help produce a better society in Northern Ireland. This was called the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It was signed in Belfast on November 15th 1985. The Irish government narrowly voted it true on the 21st of November and the UK government approved it by a huge majority on the 27th of November. UK government approved it by a huge majority on the 27th of November. Although all Ulster Unionist

MPs were against the agreement, this was ignored. Of course they were. They're against fucking anything. So the reaction within Unionist community was uproar, genuine shock and a feeling of betrayal from their point of view, the idea that their own government

could give a foreign country the right to a say in northern ireland affairs without consulting northern ireland mps was incredible the ulster unionist leader um james molyneux said that northern ireland was being delivered from one nation to another although the sdlp supported the agreement shin fein was against it because the Irish government was recognising Northern Ireland's existence. Some individual UK and many individual Irish politicians spoke out against the agreement too. As a protest

all the unionist MPs resigned forcing new elections all over Northern Ireland. Although the unionist vote went up, they lost the constituency of Newry and Armagh to the SDLP. they began to campaign to have the agreement abolished using the slogan Ulster says no Ulster says no banner soon appeared on local government buildings all over Northern Ireland including the huge one on Belfast City

Hall there was mass demonstrations led by Ian Paisley senior and of the DUP and James Molyneux of the UUP and continued all throughout 1985 into 1986 but had little effect. In February 1986, the UUP and DUP began boycotting all government officials, but again, this did not change anything. I mean, I feel like this should be a lesson to the unionists that the union

actually doesn't care all that much about them but it's funny because that is something that's trotted out and i know i've said it before but it's something i want to talk about at the end of the episode because they as this is not a comprehensive history i think it i want to talk more so about my personal feelings about it at the end and coming from someone who was born in the republic of ireland and has obviously like researched so much about northern ireland and has talked to people from northern ireland about their feelings for this series i think it's a lot more complicated than britain doesn't care about northern ireland i think that is true but also the majority of people in the Republic of Ireland don't care about Northern Ireland either

I think it's more so that people in the Republic like to go on about United Ireland but they don't and it's something I'm going to talk about at the end even if there is United Ireland there will still be about a million people in Ireland who still

consider themselves British and even if Northern Ireland doesn't rejoin there will still be about a million people in the North still consider themselves British and even if Northern Ireland doesn't rejoin there'll still be about a million people in the north who consider themselves Irish. Now I think it's important to pause here as we move into the mid to late 80s because the tone of what has been going on will get a lot more violent and gets a lot darker and I think it's important to discuss who is arming both sides of the conflict. The IRA to continue and escalate its armed campaign they needed to be better equipped which meant securing modern small arms. In previous campaigns weapons had been secured before hostilities commenced via raids on British army or even Irish army weapons depots. In

the period between 1969 and 1971 this was no longer feasible. By 1972 the IRA had large quantities of modern small arms particularly Armalite rifles manufactured and purchased in the United States. The AR-18 rifle in particular

was found to be particularly well suited for urban guerrilla warfare as its small size and folding stock made it easy to conceal. Moreover, it was capable of rapid fire and fired a high velocity round, which is considered to have great stopping power, quote unquote, great stopping power. And if I remember correctly, British military body armor at the time was inefficient and ineffective, to say the least. Yeah. was inefficient and ineffective to say the least yeah i remember during the sniper of armog saga like there they were they issued out these heavy steel plates and just nobody wore them yeah sniper sniper of arma joe armag yeah that's what i said one of the ira's main gun runners in the united States was a guy called George Harrison, an IRA veteran who resided in New York since 1938. Harrison had set up a gunrunning network in America since the 1950s where he had supplied arms in the 1956 to 62 border campaign he bought

guns for the ira from a corsican arms dealer called george de mayo and who had connections with organized crime so we've got the italian mafia coming in oh wait no court is corsica's part of france isn't it yeah yeah okay so once again nap where Napoleon's from. The legacy of Napoleon pops up on this show once again. We're getting into wagon manifest territory in a second. Let's go back to the fucking 1812 series, baby. Everybody loves me some

wagon manifests. Joe Cahill acted as a contact between NORAD, which was the North American aid organization that was used to raise money to be sent to Catholic communities in Ireland. Did you say the acronym was NORAD?

Yeah, N-O-R-A-I-D, NORAD. To differentiate from NORAD, the air defense network of the United States, famously tracks Santa. Yeah. So, like I said, Joe Cal acted as a go-between between NORAD and Harrison.

And in 1971, the RUC had already seized 700 modern weapons from the IRA, along with two tons of high explosive and 1,157,000 rounds of ammunition, most of which was manufactured in America. Shocked. I'm shocked. Harrison spent an estimated $1 million in the 1970s

purchasing over 2,500 guns for the IRA. According to Brendan Hughes, a key figure in the Bs purchasing over 2,500 guns for the IRA. According to Brendan Hughes a key figure in the Belfast Brigade the IRA smuggled small arms from the United States by sea on the Queen Elizabeth II from New York via Southampton through Irish members of its crew was shut down by

the FBI in the early 1980s after almost a decade of effort. These Queen Elizabeth II shipments included Armalites and were driven from Southampton to Belfast in small consignments. In the late 1970s, another IRA member was sent to the United States to acquire more arms, and he was able to procure Armalite 15 rifles, so AR-15s, plus a number of Heckler & Koch rifles and other weapons. Again, the purchase of these weapons was funded through Irish American Republicans and also included a batch of

M60 machine guns which were stolen from a US National Guard armory in 1977. Hell yeah, we love to see it. I'm honestly curious, did any of these American gunrunners for the IRA ever get picked up and thrown in prison, or did the US just kind of not pay attention too hard? I'm literally about to get to that. Okay, perfect. So, in 1984, the FBI warned the Republic of Ireland that a major

IRA arms shipment was underway from the United States, and the weaponry could be transferred to an Irish fishing trawler in the Atlantic. Subsequently, they were tipped off, and in addition to people getting arrested harrison of four other men tom falvey michael flannery pat mullen and they are danny gormley arrested by the fbi in 1981 as part of a sting operation but acquitted at their trial in 1982 so this is absolutely the case of the fbi being like yeah we're totally gonna catch these irish

gun druthers oh oh looks like they're acquitted so um if you want to hear some crazy shit that they were about to get access to the men were charged with attempting to smuggle a consignment of arms to ireland which included a flamethrower a 20 millimeter anti-tank rifle and their acquittal was widely attributed to the unconventional efforts of harrison's personal attorney frank durkin the men did not deny their activities but claimed that they believed the operation had been sanctioned by the cia uh mcgahee was also arrested again by the fbi in 1982 after a successful stinger operation where he was trying to purchase a surface to air missile for the ira hell yeah bro and honestly like it the fbi at this point this is the 80s right like

if they're like the cia told me to do it the fbi agents are just like looking at each other like it's probably probably is what happened it sounds like like that sounds like something they would do now there was also another source of weapons to the ira at this period and that was mulmar gaddafi a fucking course it was like he's like the ultimate chaos agent before you know his uh his his demise of giving weapons to literally anyone who was fighting someone that could be considered one of libya's enemies it didn't matter if they have a ira or a chicago street gang you were gonna get some service to air missiles and machine guns like yeah so um the other source in the 70s was muhammad gaddafi who was engaging in a strategy at this time of opposing united states interest in the middle east by sponsoring

paramilitary activity against it and its allies in western europe yes sponsoring the ira really hurts the us the first libyan arms shipment took took the ira uh between 1972 and 73 following visits by joe cahill to libya in early 1973 the irish government received intelligence that of the vessel claudia was carrying a consignment of weapons and placed the ship under surveillance on the 27th of march on the 28th of march three irish navy vessels intercepted the claudia in irish international waters near helvick head in county waterford near where i'm from and seizing five tons of libyan small arms and ammunition on board the weaponry include seized included 250 soviet made uh small arms 250 rifles

anti-tank missiles and other explosives and the british never even deployed tanks in northern ireland from my understanding and and not to mention a whole box full of gaddafi's shitty green book so the that anti-tank rifle uh anti-tank mines sorry not missiles and we're that makes more sense okay we're used against saracens the armored transport for the army so cal also found himself, was also found and arrested on board the vessel. It is estimated that three other

shipments of weaponry of a similar size and nature succeeded in getting through to the IRA during the same period. Early Libyan arms shipments provided

the IRA with their first RPG-7 rockets and propelled grenades and that Gaddafi also gave three to five million US dollars

at this time to the organisation to finance his activities. However, contact with the Libyan government was broken off in 1976. Why? Did they have a falling out about the Green Book or something? It's also in part because you know the way Gaddafi

is in that he will move his circle depending on what benefits him in his petty ways. But contact with Libya was opened again in the aftermath of the 1981 hunger strike, which was said to have personally impressed Gaddafi. And in the 1980s, the IRA received further large quantities of weaponry and explosives. The Libyan government, reportedly enough to equip at least two professional infantry battalions. Oh my god! Something that the

IRA never had, but you know. Four shipments of guns, ammunition and explosives were sent between 1985 and 86, providing large quantities of weapons, including heavy machine guns, over a thousand rifles, several hundred handguns, rocket-propelled grenades,

flamethrowers, surface-to-air missiles, and Semtex explosives. I gotta give some respect to the IRA's commitment to the flamethrower bit, because this happens so often. They even built their own a couple of times. But from the late 1986

onwards, virtually every bomb constructed by the provisional ira and splinter groups such as the real ira contains semtex from a libyan shipment unloaded on an irish pier in 1986 so i have a list i feel like that there's still there's still libyan weapons floating around northern ireland since they sent so goddamn many of them so included in the shipment and this is for the gun nerds included, MP5 submachine guns, 9mm Browning Taurus Glock and Beretta handguns, AK-47 Kalashnikovs and AKM assault rifles, RPG-7s,

Soviet-made DSHK heavy machine guns, FN MAG machine guns, military flamethrowers, Semtex, and Strela-2 man-portable 2 man portable service to air missiles did they ever use these to shoot down helicopters like did that ever happen no but they're still floating around so lovely not only did the libyans supply weapons in addition to these sources deals were also struck with armed dealers in czechoslovakia belgium canada norway and of course the plo of course yeah why not

but even more interesting um now it's not clear how the loyalist paramilitaries acquired weapons in the 70s consistently although there is allegations that they received assistance from former military personnel who had since moved into private contracting but as we moved into the 1980s, I'll give you one guess who was supplying them with arms. Alright, I'm going to take two swings at this. It's the CIA or the Mossad?

You got one of them right. Mossad? We've already talked about the CIA. So, loyalists were successful in importing arms into Northern Ireland. The weapons were PLO arms captured by the Israeli forces sold to Arms Corps, a South African state

owned company which in the 1977 United Arms embargo said about making South Africa self-sufficient in military hardware. So it was apartheid South Africa by way of the fucking Mossad. Yep. Jesus Christ!

Like, what kind of chaotic clusterfuck is it when you have Muammar Gaddafi, the CIA, the Mossad, apartheid South Africa, and the PLO all, like, shaking hands? And, uh, it's not in the script, but funny enough,

um, during decommissioning, which happened after the troubles, these funny enough, during decommissioning, which happened after the Troubles, these weapons were meant to be destroyed. As sins against man and God. I'll give you one guess where some of them ended up. What year is this? So this is the early 2000s.

Oh, okay. I was going to say Rhodesia because that would just complete the circuit, but that's too late for that. In the early 2000s, hmm, I'm going to say Liberia. Yep and other various Central African conflicts but

the arms which were divided between the UVF, UDA and the Ulster Resistance included 200 Czechoslovakian SAVZ-58 automatic rifles, 90 Browning pistols, 500 RGD-5

fragmentation grenades, 30,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 RPG-7 rockets and 150 warheads. At one stage, oh it doesn't end here, at one stage, Arms Corps south african state-owned company tried to supply loyalist paramilitaries with a large payload missile which was seized

we're talking like a ground-based ballistic missile here yes gee what the fuck were they gonna do with that i don't know like where do you like like i guess like you know kudos your dedication to supplying these people i mean though you don't have to hand it to fucking apartheid south africa but also let's think this practically these guys are all hiding these weapons and houses and shit and you're gonna give these guys like a fucking scud missile like what do you expect them to do with it yeah like imagine the look of the ira's face offloading this like uh this fucking boat captain by a guy named like i don't know we're vonda durf or something and they're offloading like a scud b like where the

like am i supposed to strap this to the top of my renal like what the fuck do you want me to do with this fucking jerk vander clerk landing on the shores of county down fucking christ i mean if anybody would do that it's the rhodesians or the apartheid south africans so i'll give you another guess at a question i'm about to ask one question you might have is how they could afford all of these weapons i'll give you one guess joe i mean you said gaddafi gave him a fuckload of cash so it has to be something other than that right uh diaspora and charities armed robbery bank robbery drug dealing and extortion yeah that's probably the better answer yeah that doesn't surprise that doesn't surprise me of course these are like i think we've talked

out before the show at a long enough timeline all of your heroic revolutionary clubs that don't like win their war just turn into local hood rat shit so both sides um became particularly adept at armed robbery and bank robbery there are several noted both loyalist and republican paramilitary um members who have been arrested for large-scale bank robberies and the drug dealing aspect so um for anyone who listens to 33rd county um you will know that ireland was flooded with heroin in the 80s and both the ira and the uda are implicated in its transportation its distribution and ironically at the same time the ira had a very strict anti-drug dealing stance yeah of course they did it's the taliban did the same fucking thing like every revolutionary group that like in the modern times

that I'm aware of has dealt drugs like mostly heroin and meth and shit like that and while at the same time like kneecapping and punishing people within their territory for using drugs openly like it's for selling to other people because you know

reasons yeah and so extortion also extended to petty drug dealers who and drug dealing gangs they had to pay protection money to the ira in order to continue their business it's belfast Yeah. But also, as a consequence for going against the IRA or the UVF or the UDA, there also came consequences for anyone caught breaking their rules, dealing on their turf, not paying extortion money. And those included kidnapping, kneecapping, maiming, torture, and murder. And kneecapping is getting shot in the fucking knee caps to be completely no there there is subcategories to knee capping and not to there's subcategories in this god jesus christ so not to be not to sound glib but the ira had three well two main methods

which were quite common and a third method that i have anecdotally heard about through my research so one was the classic shooting your kneecaps i choose that one i feel like that's the best case here so the second option is using a high power drill to drill through your kneecap yep i'm still redeemed by getting shot in the kneecaps being the best way out. And the third option, which, you know, this is like the price is right, you get to pick, you know, your door.

You could get a claw hammer, the claw of a claw hammer put underneath your kneecap and your kneecap pulled out underneath your skin. Yeah, I choose to have my kneecap blown out with Muammar Gaddafi's hand-me-downs in addition to that maiming which included the cutting off of appendages such as fingers toes ears and then there was also general intimidate physical intimidation which included

beatings you know kidnappings the ira also would later perfect a new form of bank robbery called a tiger kidnapping in which a bank manager would be kit will be kidnapped and their family held at ransom unless they would open the bank's vault without setting off alarms so it's the tiger mom of bank robbery so and just as an addendum and an interesting fact about northern ireland jumping a bit ahead there is you know also the also the fact that Northern Ireland would eventually become the world's leading center for prosthetics research and fitting. This is because both sides injured so many civilians. 2004 states 129 patients sustained amputations and this is from just one hospital in Belfast

110 male, 19 female with an age range between 7 to 60 years of age 72 were civilian, 93 underwent immediate amputation. The most frequent level of amputation was transfemoral, so that's below the femur. good god 92 patients required amputation of one limb or part thereof 35 35 required amputation of two limbs and two underwent triple amputation three patients lost both hands 67 had other associated injuries 32 patients had the delay of six months or more in fitting

a prosthesis and the most common cause of injury was the car bomb i mean and this is i know we talked about before where like they would call ahead to warn like hey we're gonna bomb this fucking part of town at x time but like they didn't always fucking do that you know like it's just fucking unconscionable man like what you just destroy a city block full of people and congratulations you fucking hero but this belays the point that at this point in the troubles more and more people were being hurt outside of the conflict a lot more civilians were starting to get hurt obviously the increased supply of arms was a huge influence in the level of violence and the level of destruction so that would have quite a long legacy even in that report that was published in

you know 2004 there were still people being fitted for amputations fitted for prosthetics for things that happened in the 80s oh i can imagine it created a massive backlog i mean you know when carbone goes off that's you know conservatively that could be 20 fucking people whose lives are changed for the rest of their lives with prosthesis uh you know eyesight hearing you it, not to mention the mental scars that come with all this shit. And to begin to start to talk about that escalation, the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was a relic of the failed Sunningdale Agreement, was abolished on the 23rd of June 1986.

Some members, mainly from the DUP, had to be physically dragged from the building. In 1986, the UVF and UDA decided to use violence to try and force the abolition of the Anglo-Irish agreement. They began a terrorist campaign against Catholics and specifically the

RUC who they saw as traitors since they were required to enforce the agreement. Attacks on homes increased and in February 1987 a 400,000 petition was given to the Queen. By 1987 the government was still ignoring the campaign and it began to dwindle away. Margaret Thatcher won the 1988 general election and reviewed the Anglo-Irish agreement. When the review resulted in no significant changes, most unionists gave up hope

of ever removing it and acknowledged that their campaign had failed. All during this period, violence had continued with almost 300 murders, all by paramilitary groups, between 1984 and 1987 inclusive. And this is like bombing, shootings, straight up kidnapping and murder. So this could, I know we're going quickly over these numbers, but people maybe should know that a fair number of these are innocent fucking people. Like any conflict, the vast majority of

casualties are innocent civilians. That's not counting the amount of people who disappeared. Like, quote unquote disappeared I remember and I'm sure you can think of a few cases that people are still being

found to this day I remember something quite recently that came up about something like that we'll never know the true numbers of people that died during this period because some of them will simply never be found.

Yeah, and it puts a pin in the point of the generational trauma that the country still suffers to this day from all of the people who are affected by it. But one of the worst massacres occurred on the 6th of November 1987 when the

IRA detonated a bomb and a war memorial and a skilling as crowds of civilians gathered to watch the remembrance day parade one billion one building collapsed onto the crowd killing 11 people and injuring many more good god this is so this is like uh uk memorial day type situation like okay fucking christ man so one survivor was still in a coma as of 1998 and in march 1987 the british secret service yeah in march 1987 the british secret services shot dead three ira members at gibraltar although there is still a lot of uncertainty about what exactly happened a few days later, a loyalist gunman named Michael Stone killed

three mourners at the funerals of the men. When two British soldiers accidentally drove into the vicinity of the funeral cortege, one of the three mourners, the funeral cortege of one of the three mourners, they were mobbed and dragged out of the car and brutally murdered. The presence

of media cameras meant that the murders were recorded and broadcast on television across the world holy fuck okay that is an escalation i mean that's a that's a lynching but you can also hardly blame them this is what this is one of those tit for tat type blood feud things that like it literally has no end like yeah as the violence continued the uup and dup ended their boycott of the uk government in september 1987 in order to have talks about the possibility of having new peace talks around about this time a media broadcasting ban was introduced for those organized for the organizations that had advocated for the violence. So this is where you have the origins of, you know, Jerry Adams being voiced over on the BBC.

He was voiced over? Yeah, so... Wait, Jerry Adams had a fucking dubbing? Yeah, you can look up videos. You couldn't hear Jerry Adams' actual voice on TV for years. That is fucking wild. He got like the four kids dub over treatment

by the British media. So this included the IRA, UVF, Sinn Féin and the UDA and was designed to starve them of publicity. Between 1988 and 1992 there were many attempts to create conditions for all party talks in Northern Ireland.

To simplify things, the talks were divided into three strands. Strand 1 concerned the internal government of Northern Ireland. Strand 2 concerned the North-South relations. Strand 3 concerned the UK-Irish relations. The UK also hinted that they might talk to Sinn Féin if the IRA halted its campaign of violence. Until then, Sinn F fein would be excluded from the talks and the whole like i'm trying to remember here the whole hitching point here was like shin fein and the ira pretending they're two completely separate entities right yeah at this

point the the ira was just considered the political wing of, um, oh no, sorry, Sinn Fein were considered the political wing of the IRA. Um, right. And, but like they wouldn't acknowledge that publicly, right? It part, yes and no.

It depends. It depends on the representative. I, this split happened between the political wing of Sinn Fein and what would be considered the IRA in 1970. So at this stage, they were still, you know, there is no links between the two of us. But when the talks

finally began in 1991, it didn't get far. Every party had a vital issue that it was not prepared to compromise on, and none of the main paramilitary groups, the IRA, the UDF, or the ira the udf or the uv or the uda and uvf were represented any agreement that did come out of the talks did not include the people causing the violence something new and something different was needed in order to break

the stalemate and preferably something that could not allow the paramilitary groups or that could allow paramilitary groups to be represented the problem with this is that right like that makes sense why would they put down their weapons if they don't have a say in the matter yeah the problem with this was that uh most people had a problem with allowing the people who use terrorist methods to enter democratic discussions also i understand that like i can i could see why people don't want to put down their guns but i could also see why the population of people who have been terrorized by both sides of these of this war like why the fuck would i want to enter a polite discussion with the guy who just bombed the fucking memorial day celebration or whatever like i could i could say and this is like this

has nothing to do with catholic or protestant this is just civilians who like we talked about before just just want to like get on with their fucking day and live their lives now why the fuck am i gonna enter a democratic discussion with this guy who's just been kneecapping people over meth that the challenge was taken up by john hume the leader of the sdlp he began to have negotiations with jerry adams the president of shin SDLP. He began to have negotiations with Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin, concerning the possibility of an IRA ceasefire and how it would allow Sinn Féin to join the talks. The result was a document called the Hume-Adams Initiative, which was presented to both governments. Around about this time, the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party were formed representing the UVF and the UDA respectively, sometimes referred to as fringe loyalists. This gave the loyalist paramilitaries a political voice for the first time, in the same way that the IRA could speak true Sinn Féin.

Unlike the 1988-92 talks, the way was now clear for paramilitary organisations to be present at the talks, providing they halted their acts of violence by calling a ceasefire. This was vital, since it was the paramilitaries who were causing the violence in Northern Ireland at this stage, it was this set of right conditions as well as the Huma Adams initiative that prompted the British and Irish governments to make a historic announcement in 1993. In late 1993 the British and Irish governments looked at the situation and realized that all the conditions were right now to begin a peace process. For the first time ever all the paramilitary groups had were represented and prepared to negotiate. The people of Northern Ireland had endured 24 years of violence and there was a growing feeling that something had to be done to end it once and for all. So the two governments met and on the 15th of December 1993 announced their mutual positions on Northern Ireland which they hoped would be the basis for future negotiations. Called the Downing Street Declaration, it committed both governments to developing new political frameworks and permitting any party that gave up violence

to join talks. The UK declared that they had no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland, accepted that a united Ireland was possible if a majority so desired and promised to work towards an agreement. The Irish agreed that a united Ireland could only happen with majority consent and would set up a forum for peace and reconciliation the declaration angered the extreme unionists who accused the uk of selling off ulster and shin fane whose only mp jerry adams lost his seat in the 1993 election and he jerry adams said it was he was disappointing or he was disappointed i'm not mad i'm disappointed the groups representing the paramilitaries

called for clarification of the document. The more moderate parties gave it a guarded welcome. After several months, the UK government released a commentary on the declaration

clarifying the issues for the paramilitary linked parties. They said that both Sinn Féin and the fringe loyalists could join the talks if they laid down their arms. In February 1994, the USA permitted Gerry Adams to go there for the first time and he received huge publicity.

Afterwards, President Bill Clinton, so another person is wading into the foray, urged the IRA to call a ceasefire. Eventually, on the 31st of August 1994, after 25 years of violence, the IRA announced a complete cessation of military operations. Spontaneous celebrations broke out all over nationalist areas, which unions viewed with suspicion. However, six weeks later, on the 13th of October 1994, the Combined Loyalist Military Command, an umbrella group which represented the UVF and UDA, announced their own ceasefire. Although the way now appeared clear for talks to begin, it was not that simple. The unionists objected strongly to suggestions that the parties should become involved in talks,

pointing out that neither organisation had said their ceasefires were permanent, which they understood the Downing Street Declaration would require. While the SDLP said they believed that the cessations were permanent, Sinn Féin said the term was meaningless. However, the UK government went ahead with meeting Sinn Féin on the 9th of December 1994, the first of such meetings since 1972, and again in the first half of 1995.

No talks were planned, however. As a confidence-building measure, the British Army daytime patrols in Belfast were abolished in January, and some security installations were dismantled and troops pulled out. Over this time, American support for Sinn Féin grew with Gerry Adams being invited

to the White House for St. Patrick's Day. The fringe loyalist UDP also took up the invitation. The summer months of 1965 were marred with violence. Sinn Féin had introduced a policy of opposing the Orange Order and Apprentice Boy marches which they regarded as sectarian.

Some of these marches went through nationalist areas as we spoke about before. These marches had followed the same routes for many years but the demographic changes had turned formerly unionist areas as we spoke about before. These marches had followed the same routes for many years but the demographic changes had turned formerly unionist areas into nationalist areas. Now some of the local residents had decided they weren't going to tolerate the marches in these areas anymore. Riding broke out all over Northern Ireland, especially at orange parades and extensive property damage was caused. The ceasefires were strained but held. property damage was caused. The ceasefires were strained, but held.

Although the peace talks had started by mid-1995, neither Sinn Féin nor the fringe loyalists had been permitted to enter. The main reason that the UK Prime Minister John Major had said was that paramilitaries must decommission their weapons before political wings could be admitted to the talks to prove

that their cessations were permanent. Sinn Féin were outraged by this, saying that the decommissioning had not been on the table when the IRA called for a ceasefire. Right, they seem to just be moving the goalposts. Yeah. The problem caused a stalemate, and in November 1995,

the government released another document which set up a body to look at the issue of decommissioning. The International Body of Arms Decommissioning was chaired by US Senator George Mitchell at Christmas 1995 Bill Clinton made a historic visit to Northern Ireland to support

the peace process but even this visit was not enough to surmount the stalemate. In January 1996 Senator Mitchell presented the Mitchell Report which recommended that parties be permitted to join talks if their paramilitary wins, wings decommissionissioned weapons during the talks. The IRA were once again furious saying that decommissioning could not begin until the process was completed and refused to hand over

any weapons. Strains within the IRA reached new levels as Sinn Féin tried to hold them together. However, on the 9th of February 1996 at 7pm, the IRA released the statement that their ceasefire was over. 60 seconds later, a massive bomb exploded at Canary Wharf in London, killing two civilians and causing millions of pounds of damage. Sinn Féin appeared to be genuinely surprised by the announcement and the bomb. So once again, this is the to be like a rift between the two. So once again, this is the emergence

of a new tendency of the IRA. This is once again tendency infighting. Is this the birth of the real IRA or the continuity IRA or something? So this is the birth of the real IRA. The real IRA emerged due to the refusal to accept the Good Friday Agreement. And they're still around today, correct?

They were kind of linked to the murder of is it Lyra McKee? Yeah. So in response to the bomb at Canary Wharf, the British Army recommenced patrols in Belfast and some security arrangements were put back in place. The IRA had changed tactics since the

last campaign, however. They were aware of the level of disappointment in the nationalist community and decided not to lower their support further by attacking targets in Northern Ireland. Instead, they concentrated their campaign on mainland Britain, with bombs in London and a massive one in

Manchester and central England. The fringe loyalist parties managed to persuade the loyalist paramilitaries to maintain their ceasefires throughout this period. That just goes to show how unpopular this shit is like none of the nationalists like want any part to do with this even the unionists aren't hitting back like these guys are fucking assholes like i i know that's not like a very eloquent way of putting uh like explaining about terror tactics and shit like i have no other way to to to to explain that it's just selfishness and self-aggrandizement and militant brain

so part of the issue like i said with the with the split away from the existing factions of the ira is that within the loyalist paramilitaries there was some level of cohesion so they were able to hold people together in order to maintain their ceasefire whereas with elements in the IRA that then went on form the real IRA they because of the amount of weapons that they had available they were able to you know carry out attacks independent from the main you know army council or organizational body as you would call it of the IRA. The summer of 1996 saw some of the worst civil unrest Northern Ireland had seen for many years. The most contentious area was on the 6th of July Drumcree Orange Parade in Portadown, which went along mainly Nationalist Garvey Road.

Residents refused to let them march down and the police banned the march. However, the Orange men said that they would march at any cost and massed more and more people around the Drumcree church. Over the same period, Loyalist rioting and roadblocks broke out all over Northern Ireland, causing much damage. In one attack attack Loyalists

poured several tons of concrete from a bridge onto the main highway in the province the M1 blocking it for days. That's kind of genius I never like it well I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often in like civil unrest. Trains and buses were also hijacked and burned many people did not dare go to work for fear of not being able to get home again. When an armor-plated JCB digger appeared at Drumcree on the 11th of July, the police were lent and let the march go. So this is like...

Like an armored bulldozer. Yeah, pretty much. It's a killdozer kind of... Yeah. However, this resulted in several days of Republican rioting and roadblocks causing more damage on august 28 to a senior uvf member billy wright was expelled from the organization for drugs trafficking right then founded the breakaway loyalist volunteer force which was not

on cease which was not on ceasefire and began terrorist attacks. Of course, dude gets expelled for slinging dope. And now he's like, ah, no, I'm going to be a revolutionary hero again. Yeah. See, we're, we're, we're nearly, we're nearly done, Joe. We're nearly done. So, um, on the 30th of September, however, the CLMC had enough of the UVA of, uh, had enough and the UVF and U uda ceasefires were terminated on march 19 in march 1997 billy wright was imprisoned for issuing death threats i mean of all the things

that he was doing that's like the least amount of things he could be in prison for yeah so at this point in time i think it's pretty clear to anyone listening, this could have went, talks could have completely fallen apart. Any sort of peace that had been negotiated thus far would have just been completely dissolved. It really seems like it was within a hair's breadth of going right back to the 80s. Yeah, and as we'll talk about in a second, it almost did. The UK Prime Minister, Tony Blairir anxious to get the process moving again announced that all party talks were starting regardless of whether shin fein was present or not shin fein were you know still somewhat affiliated with the ira in order to speak for

them and could not enter unless the ira was announced as another ceasefire the issue of decommissioning became less important as it had become clear that the IRA was not going to accept it. The summer months of 1997 were once again marred with violence. In an attempt to avoid the 1996 violence, the police forced the Drum Cree Orange March down Garvey Road by

barricading the streets with Land Rovers. The result of this was several nights of province-wide Republican violence with 200 carjackings and 600 attacks on security forces. 200 carjackings? Jesus Christ! Yep. The IRA realized after the marching season was over that if the talks were going ahead, regardless of Sinn Féin's presence, that it would be better to be there to ensure that they had a voice. So, on the 20th of July, 1997, the IRA called a new ceasefire.

In August, Mo Mowlam, Northern Ireland Minister, said that Sinn Féin would now be admitted to the talks if they accepted the principle of democratic and non-violent means. On the 9th of September, Sinn Féin did so, and although the IRA released a statement saying that they did not, on the 15th of September all of Northern Ireland's political parties except the DUP and UKUP who boycotted it sat down for peace talks. It was a very historic day and after initial qualms the unionist parties began agreed

to begin agreed to begin the negotiations on October 7 7th progress was slow but was made on december 27th 1997 lvf leader billy wright who was shot dead in the maze prison by an inla inmate they get another gun in there how many times does this happen a couple of times oh god, goddammit. The LVF, which had never called for a ceasefire, began what it called Measured Military Response, which consisted of murdering Catholic civilians. Uh, yeah, that sounds like terrorism, uh, with a fancy tactical name.

So this is just random civilians being shot. Several Protestants were murdered in retaliation. Revolutionary serial murderers. Absolutely. Well done, boys. You've made it. And the UVF UDA ordered their political representatives, the PUP and UDP, to pull out of the talks.

Mo Mowlam, or Mowlam, depending on how you want to pronounce it, was able, however, to persuade them to stay. And when the UDA admitted to three murders in late January 1998, the UDP was expelled for three weeks. They killed three people and were suspended from school for three weeks?

Oh man, those are some serious sanctions there. In February, the IRA was blamed for two killings and Sinn Féin was expelled for three weeks. Sinn Féin was expelled for three weeks. Sinn Féin protested strongly and threatened to fight the decision in the courts. It dropped the action after a few days, however. Both parties stayed away for longer than three weeks as a protest,

and Sinn Féin eventually returned on the 23rd of March, 1998. They also admitted that a united Ireland was not going to come out of the process. Not least they the realistic. On the 25th of March, the talks chairman, George Mitchell, decided that the process needed a catalyst and announced the agreement must be reached by Thursday, the 9th of April, 1998 at the latest. The talks went into full-time session as the agreements were reached with astonishing speed. as the agreements were reached with astonishing speed. On April 6th, which is my birthday, Senator Mitchell released a draft discussion agreement to the parties.

However, the unionists objected strongly to strand two north-south proposals and for a few days it looks like the talks were about to collapse. Only the personal intervention of Tony Blair and President Clinton managed to assuage their fears. On the 9th of April, the talks went into a 24-hour session in a failed attempt to reach the midnight deadline as the eyes of the world watched torment. Eventually, at 5pm on the 10th of April, Good Friday, Senator Mitchell announced that the parties had reached an agreement after 29 years. Pictures of Sinn Féin, the Loyalists, the SDLP and the Unionists sitting together

applauding the announcement were beamed across the world. Copies of the agreement were sent to every home in Northern Ireland and a referendum was announced for the 22nd of May 1998. During the five weeks of campaigning, the Unionist vote was consistently split 50-50 in the polls and five UUP members broke ranks and joined the DUP UKUP in their campaign for a no vote.

The result, however, was a clear majority, 71% yes, indications that the unionist community voted yes by a slim margin. The nationalist community had voted about 95% yes. The Republic of Ireland's parallel referendum received a massive endorsement too of around the same percentage. Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly took place in June. In these, the yes unionists won the majority of the unionist seats and so the Assembly looked likely

to survive. However, the unionists So this is just like an overall rejection of the continued militancy of northern ireland yeah so however the unionists refused to join government with shin fein unless the ira decommissioned its weapon around about this time as the agreement was being implemented a number of dissident republican groups who were opposed to the agreement began terrorist attacks one such group the self-styled real ira began bombing town centers although although the gardie foiled several of their attacks their bomb in oma on the 15th of august which killed 29 civilians she soon showed them

to be a major threat yeah oma is still one of the darkest days in northern irish history just they bombed a pub to kill 29 people injured so many more joe is joe's about to take off his glasses like this is it's fucking incontrovertible man like it's one of the things that always pisses me off is like you occasionally get people that still will like champion the real IRA and who, you know, are a little more than murdering drug dealers. And, and that they're a little more than that now. I mean,

like quite literally the, the founding members were fucking, we're, we're, we're pipe hitting drug dealers from the, from the provost, right? Like,

and now they're murdering a pub full of people who simply want to go out and have a fucking drink just because they're Protestants. So this outrage provided the impetus needed to push the various sides together. And within weeks, the UUP and PUP agreed to have talks with Sinn Féin. And Sinn Féin said the war was over and began cooperating with the decommissioning body. All paramilitary organizations except the cac declared ceasefires but the british and irish governments committed to the early release of approximately 400 prisoners serving sentences and connections with the activities of paramilitary

groups provided that those groups continue to maintain a complete and unequivocal ceasefire i was going to ask about that are all these guys in prison because I assume there's hundreds, thousands in prison over the course of the 20 some odd years of conflict. Are they suddenly like, alright, free to go? I'm about to get to that. So prisoners from the Continuity IRA,

the LVF and the INLA and the Real IRA were not eligible for release because the groups had not agreed to the unequivocal ceasefire there was no amnesty for crimes that had not been yet prosecuted the war is still technically still going yeah i mean like if you consider yourself a prisoner of war and your side has not stopped fighting you're still a prisoner of war the northern ireland sentences act in 1998 received royal assent on the 28th of july 1998

167 prisoners were released by october and by december 1999 308 prisoners have been released the final group of prisoners were released on the 28th of july 2000 giving a total of 428 prisoners released and are members of the continuity continuity IRA and the other groups, are they still serving their prison sentences? Some of them have been released. They've finished their sentences. A couple of them have ended up back in prison for other crimes. But for the vast majority,

most people who are convicted of crimes during the Troubles have been since released. So with that in mind, as we come to the close of the Troubles, several years later in 2007, we would see two people who 30 years later would stood on opposite sides of the aisle with bitter hatred in their eyes. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, once leader of the Provisional IRA, and the Honourable Reverend Ian Paisley Sr., who was a hardline loyalist who championed the Ulster Says No campaign

and had a vehement hatred of Catholics, both stood in a power-sharing agreement as Prime Minister and Deputy Minister of Northern Ireland, a standing testament to the Good Friday Agreement. And at the same time in the late 90s, another inquiry was called into Bloody Sunday. This being called the Savile Inquiry, it attempted to rectify the wrongs of the Widgery Inquiry. It recalled all witnesses, all soldiers that were still alive,

and all parties involved in order to get to the bottom of what happened. Oh no, sorry. It ran until 2011. It re-interviewed people like Bernadette Devlin, families of the victims and the soldiers. And one thing that I think it says a lot, I want to put a pin in because I mentioned it as we're talking about the people who are involved in the violence in the Troubles. I want to talk about one person who did not face justice during the Savile Inquiry for Bloody Sunday because he was dead. Born in Cyprus to Greek Cypriot parents in 1951, Kostas Georgiou moved to London with his family as a child, was a member of 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment under the command of Colonel Wilford on Bloody Sunday. What role he played is unknown because of his anonymity, but Georgiou's name came into the public domain not because of what he did on Bloody Sunday, but because of his role in an even shadier conflict than either bloody or massacre three years later. an either bloodier massacre three years later.

Georgiou was dishonorably discharged from the British Army after Bloody Sunday when, along with a fellow member of a parachute regiment, Mick Wainhouse, he was found guilty of robbing a Northern Irish post office using army guns. Wait, he committed an armed robbery? He just got discharged? Yep.

Incredible. Okay. So, he connected with a man recruiting foreign mercenaries for the Angolan Civil War. Oh my god. Georgiou went out to fight for the FNLA, the National Front for the Liberation

of Angola, with a number of former colleagues, including Wainhouse, and a cousin of his girlfriend's, who was also an ex-para. For the campaign, Georgiou styled himself as Colonel Callan. After a character in a popular television series, the highest rank Colonel Callan had reached in the real army had been corporal. Despite having no officer training in Angola,

Callan commanded a disparate and disorganized group of foreign fighters. Yeah, I bet. The account of his activities in Angola, recorded by one of his fellow mercenaries, is a story of the most appalling brutality and sadism. During the campaign, Callan was involved in numerous killings,

tortures, and massacres. He enjoyed torturing people, even though there was no information he could possibly extract. He tested the effectiveness of a particular gun by putting it in the mouth of one of his Angolan soldiers and firing. Good Christ!

He repeatedly gunned down dozens of Angolans under his command and when a number of his own fighters tried to desert at an incident known as the Michaela Massacre, Callan executed his own men, 14 of them. Among them, it seems, former paras as well. As one of the

soldiers who was with him and survived observed, there was some injustice in relation to who got shot. So a guy who was involved in Bloody Sunday may have killed other people who were involved in Bloody Sunday while fighting in Angola. Yep. Good. What the fuck?

Callan and some of his mercenary comrades were eventually put on trial in luanda in june july 1976 by the victorious rivals of the fnla the mpla popular movement for the liberation of angola at the trial callan was described as a man of despotic power and satanic terror with 12 of his, he was convicted of murder and torture of civilians as well as the crime of fighting as a foreign mercenary. He was one of the four men sentenced to death and was executed

by firing squad. His body was repatriated to England. I should just yeet that shit into the sea where it belongs. For once in his life, he would have done some good by feeding fish fucking worthless scum of the earth yeah so and as the last point of this series well two last points the there's never been any justice for bloody sun neck the savel inquiry did not give

any legal reprimand to those involved. One of the greatest efforts that they did was to find the guns that were used, the SLR rifles that were used on Bloody Sunday. They found them as far away as Angola, Liberia, and in an arms cache by the Lebanese Royal Guard. Weird how specifically those rifles were shipped away nothing suspicious to see there i am partially the difficulty of finding these rifles was due to the fact that the assembly of those rifles were not individually serialized and the serial

numbers were not logged so certain parts were swapped out barrels are swapped out and several batches of slrs were destroyed which would and several batches of SLRs were destroyed, which would have included either parts or full rifles that were used on Bloody Sunday. And they were only able to return four rifles that had possibly been used on Bloody Sunday. And even at that, police experts could not determine whether they had been used or not. So the people who were shot on Bloody Sunday and all the civilians who had suffered on Bloody Sunday and in the violence that followed never really experienced any justice. But the one thing that the Good Friday Agreement brought and the time since is that there has been some peace and reconciliation among the communities

that have been affected by the troubles and as we now know some of that is being inflamed by various parties and i think for anyone listening at home who feels they have some sort of connection to one side or the other or ireland or the good fight I want you to think about everything you've heard over the past five hours and how all the people who died or suffered for one reason or another lost the majority of them lost their lives for no reason and when you when you say stuff to your friends or online about that thinking you know what happened in reality you didn't and a lot of people who were there would tell you something very different yeah um i guess i think that's a good way to close it out like uh you did say you wanted to talk a little bit about like um i mean you can cut this part out if that

was a good place to end it uh how you personally feel about i think it's a very complicated issue and the thing that we need to deal with first and foremost is the generational trauma that still goes on today um to the people who are still living in northern ireland or living elsewhere whose families were directly affected by it, I think the important people to remember are not people like Martin McGuinness or Ian Paisley, regardless of their involvement beforehand or their involvement in the peace that came after. It's to remember the people who were affected, who were hurt walking to school or terrorized by British soldiers getting on their school bus, the fear that they felt and how that has affected them and their families and their families going forward. I think that's one of the most important things. And I think on the question of Irish republicanism,

there's a very good speech by Patrick Kielty, who someone shared yesterday, which I watched, and he spoke about a shared Ireland regardless of whether there is a united Ireland there will still be about a million people living on it who think they're British or who are British and don't even think they're British they are British and if Northern Ireland remains in Britain there will still be about a million people who are Irish and I think with the question of a united Ireland there is something very there is a complex conversation that will have to occur and people will have to look deeply inward to find their own answers about how they feel about it and then collectively we can find an answer together uh thanks a lot tom

uh and you know thankfully we do have a light-hearted segue out of this pit of depression. And that is, uh, we have a segment on the show called questions from the Legion, where if you subscribe to the Patreon, you can ask us on discord, ask us on Patreon, um, load your question into a surface to air missile that MoMA Gaddafi has sent you and fire it towards Tom.

Uh, please don't. Legal note, please do not fire missiles at Tom. And for the first time ever someone other than me is picking this. Tom has taken the wheel for the last four weeks so I figured it was only right that

he close out his series by picking his very own question from the Legion. I have no idea what this is so this should be good. I have picked two. The first one is light for each hour of this episode the first one is a light-hearted one and is uh what is your favorite podcast to listen to and why um i go in i i kind of go in phases personally like i i mostly listen to podcasts like i i live in a very walkable city so i generally if anybody runs into me in yurovan or whatever i always have headphones in and i'm almost always listening to a podcast

i only listen to music when i'm lifting weights um and generally i have like three that are in constant rotation uh one is probably the longest podcast i've been listening to his last podcast on the left which i'm not a true crime guy by any stretch of the imagination they're just very very entertaining um the other one is knowledge fight which i've definitely talked about before on the show i've had one the host jordan come on as a guest before which still kind of blows my mind that they even gave me the time of day um and the third one is one that i listen to quite infrequently because it's an infrequent podcast called Let's Fight a Boss. It's by an Irish

group of content creators led by one of my favorite ones called Super Eyepatch Wolf where they talk about video games and media and stuff like that. It's super relaxing because I find most media-based podcasts youtubers whatever

just they're just like constantly hyper critical about things they don't like um which i i understand that some people are very entertained by but i feel it's just very draining and it's nice to hear people talk about things they're generally interested in and enjoy i have a few i was actually gonna say let's fight a boss as well but yeah you stole that fuck yeah um the one of them is finn dwyer um his irish history podcast it's fantastic really really well researched i was actually listening to a recent series that he did of the story of irish irish coffin ships um yesterday and today um other than that i like scoped exposure which is it's about hardcore music um it's like interviews

with artists yeah uh hard lore which is also like interviews with hardcore musicians and uh other world which is a kind of paranormal investigative series from Jack Wagner from Yeah But Still. It's like really good. Also, if you're interested in music and business, listen to Money For Nothing, which is like a music business podcast. It's really, really interesting. Like they talk about like different like waves in the music industry, kind of like stuff that's going on it's really cool um yeah i was supposed to only say one but i said like four and then yeah and i should probably expand on the mind and i i would be remiss if i did not mention the podcast bunta vista it is

fucking hilarious um yeah it's uh it's it's another one of those shows that's just like super chill i can't really do with like the constant negativity that a lot of shows tend to like the super black pilled negativity. I simply can't do anymore. It's just not good for you. You can't do that all the time. Yeah. And then this is going to be the hard question. It was the first one that someone they must have had this in their pocket.

Fuck, marry marry kill for every member of the zoo crew seeing how this includes myself um i will simply kill myself and i don't have to answer the rest of that question um yeah i don't really have an answer for that um i am friends with all three of you so this is weird it's a great question you've never fucked married or killed any of your friends god have you ever left have you ever lived up um yeah we'll we'll go we'll go we'll add instead of that we'll uh add in is hell exothermic or endothermic i don't know i would say endothermic because the bottom layer of hell, according to Dante's The Divine Comedy, is frozen over. So endothermic.

But yeah, that's been two hours of this show. Thank you so much once again, Joe, for having me on. This has been like a really fun ride. I'm sure everyone listening will see me on other episodes. Who knows? I might even write other ones to give Joe a holiday. Joe's allowed a

days off now. People keep telling me that I should take these things called vacations. No, it's been great. It took a lot for me to acquiesce, to hand over the wheel of the show. For obvious reasons, I've been doing this for almost five years

and I've never handed over the keys to a series to anybody before and over the course of that five years I've kind of become a giant protective baby over this thing but no it's been it's been fucking incredible obviously Tom has been on bonus episodes he's going to be on more in the future

as well as regular episodes we've already recorded a few and like I look forward to continue working obviously for people unaware he's been producing the show for quite some time and doing a very good job he's been putting up with my shit for fucking months um and as eddie as nate or tom will tell you occasionally i am a lot to deal with so like and the editor of my books would agree with that. Uh, but no, it's been,

it's been incredible. I know people have enjoyed it. Um, you know, after five years, maybe sometimes it's nice to do something different. Um, but yeah,

it's been great. Uh, uh, Tom, plug your show so we can get out of here before fucking the sun goes down. Yeah. Um, listen to beneath the skin.

Um, it's a history show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. I host it with my wonderful co-host Dr. Matt Lauder, who is an art historian. We do interesting stuff. We have an upcoming series that will be out next week about the history

of Japan told through its tattooing history. That's going to be sick. Once again, another three-part series that I have agreed to. So listen to that. Listen to 33rd County. Listen to everything that I work on. Yeah, that's it.

Cool. Follow me online. Yeah, and all of the links for that stuff will be in the show notes for people who actually remember that those exist. Thank you. And if you like what we do here consider supporting the show via patreon you get all sorts of stuff extra like discord access which is a lovely little community that we've created over the years that we share with the hell of way to die podcast you get this episode early

every regular episode early you get bonus episodes three times a month to include our two other i guess you want to call them bonus series or premium series where we're watching all of the sharp films with the zoo crew and our history of Armenia series, which you just get me and my succulent NPR voice once a month, as well as stickers and discounts and stuff like that. And you keep the show running, you help pay our producers, you help let us continue to do this thing that has become the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. And if you don't want to do that, that's fine. It's your money.

Do whatever the hell you want with it. But you can leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you use for free. It helps us a lot. It's one of the reasons why we have just won the Best History Podcast Award, which we beat. Several other larger podcasts ran by professional comedians which will not be named the dollop what's up guys how's that feel how's that fucking feel you might want to cut that out

but no really thank you guys for everything and we'll talk to you next time