242. The Troubles: Bloody Sunday & The British Army in Belfast (Ep 2)

Empire

Jack Davenport

History

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What was the British Army’s policy of “Internment” in Northern Ireland, and how did it drive membership for the Provisional IRA? Who was General Kitson? How did the Price sisters go from peaceful protestors to IRA frontline soldiers? What happened on Bloody Sunday? In the second of four episodes, Anita and William are joined once again by Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing, to discuss early IRA bombing campaigns in Belfast, and how the British Army in Northern Ireland employed methods used against other anti-colonial struggles across the British Empire. _____________ Empire UK Live Tour: The podcast is going on a UK tour! William and Anita will be live on stage in Glasgow, Birmingham, York and Bristol, discussing how the British Empire continues to shape our everyday lives. Tickets are on sale NOW, to buy yours head to empirepoduk.com. Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, and a weekly newsletter! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. Email: [email protected] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community.
0:06.7	Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter,
0:12.0	sign up to Empire Club at www.empowerpod.ukuk.com.
0:32.7	Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand.
0:34.7	And me, William Durimpole.
0:40.7	So in the last episode, the wonderful Patrick Radn-Keefe, author of the multi-award winning Say Nothing, was telling us about how Northern Ireland ignited between
0:49.1	1969 and 1970, how a place which had been quiet and there'd been discrimination, but it hadn't
0:59.0	reached a boiling point, how with the Battle of the Bogside, Molotov cocktails start to be
1:04.8	thrown in streets in Northern Ireland, that in Derry, London Derry, in Belfast, there is now mobs on the street,
1:13.9	ethnic cleansing, guns going off, and the beginning of bombs. Patrick, do you want to tell us
1:20.7	about how that bombing campaign begins to kick off in 1970? Well, the IRA, the provisional IRA, this sort of new offshoot, was very focused on bomb making
1:32.7	and started planting bombs really left and right on the theory that the business infrastructure
1:43.0	in Northern Ireland was itself a kind of expression of British
1:48.8	power. And so you start getting these bombs. I mean, loads and loads of bombs. I don't have the
1:54.5	statistics in front of me, but it's shocking how many hundreds of bombs every year. I have the figure.
1:59.9	I think by the end of 1970, there'd been 153 explosions.
2:03.7	Yeah, exactly. And this is in a very small place, right? So much of it concentrated in more urban areas,
2:10.7	and it became an incredibly dangerous place to be. They had bomb makers. They weren't always the best bomb makers. There was a notion,
2:21.2	which was, we're not trying to kill civilians here. And so we will call in warnings. But there
2:27.0	were often problems associated with these. You know, there often wasn't enough time between when
2:32.4	the warning was called in and when the bomb went off,
2:35.1	bombs went off in the wrong time, they went off in the wrong place. Sometimes a call would come in
	...

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