Dan Snow's History Hit - Bloody Sunday 100 Years On

Episode Date: November 21, 2020

Diarmaid Ferriter joined me on the podcast to talk about the events of Bloody Sunday on 21st November 1920, which marked a decisive turning-point in Irish history.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. 100 years ago today, on the 21st of November 1920, blood flowed in the streets of Dublin. During the Anglo-Irish War, the Irish War of Independence, there was a crescendo today that became known as Bloody Sunday. First the IRA struck, targeted killing the assassination of British intelligence agents or spies. Then in the afternoon, ill-disciplined British troops opened fire on a crowd in and around Croke Park, a huge sporting stadium on the outskirts of the city centre of Dublin. It was a day that would go down in infamy. 100 years on, I talked to Dermot Ferreter. He's one of Ireland's best-known historians. He's Professor of History at University College Dublin.

As you'll hear, a phenomenal historian and communicator. It's a great, great privilege to have him on, having admired him for so many years. We talked about Bloody Sunday, what it meant on both sides of the Irish Sea and all over the world, and its resonance 100 years on. If you want to watch documentaries about those turbulent years of the First World War

and the and the events that followed please go to historyhit.tv it's our digital history channel which is entering our fourth year now we had our third birthday last week we're going strong everything's cool over here so please head over to historyhit.tv see what the fuss is about if you use the code pod1 pod1 you get a month for free and you get your second month for just one pound euro or dollars you. You get two months, you can check it out. Don't like it, don't subscribe. I'm cool with that. In the meantime, everybody, enjoy Dermot Ferreter. Dermot, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Lovely to be here.

Tell me about the situation 100 years ago, coming into the autumn-winter of 2020. What was the context in Ireland? Well, the Irish War of Independence had started in early 1919, but 1919 was a relatively quiet year. The IRA's campaign against Britain was not quite at full scale then. The IRA was very poorly resourced, and it was struggling to coordinate a nationwide campaign. What happens in 1920, however, is that it becomes a much more concerted campaign and things really escalate towards the end of 1920.

This is obviously just one part of an imperial jigsaw for Britain in 1920. They have concerns about various parts of the empire, but they're really struggling to contain the bad news from Ireland. What the IRA is engaging in is a very dangerous guerrilla campaign, really, attack and retreat. It has certain advantages when it's facing British crown forces. It's seen very much as a hidden enemy. Many of the IRA are moving about in civilian garb. And they have a very effective director of organization, Michael Collins,

who, of course, becomes one of the best known characters from the War of Independence period. And he's concerned about any British efforts to penetrate the Irish intelligence efforts and the IRA's intelligence efforts. And what has been the strategy really for Michael Collins is to try and take out British intelligence agents or suspected British intelligence agents in Ireland. So that's just one part of the Irish War of Independence. There's also a political war of independence going on. Sinn Féin are seeking to gain recognition internationally for an Irish republic.

So this military campaign is in tandem with that political campaign. And it's also, of course, a propaganda battle. And that really has intensified by 1920. Sinn Féin is very effective in trying to communicate the message widely that Britain's contention that it is controlling its Irish, counter-reprisal, the flooding of Ireland with British Crown forces. There's already a Royal Irish Constabulary, which is the established police force in Ireland, which is being augmented by extra forces, the famous Black and Tans. And then another force, the Auxiliaries, who are ex-British army officers, who are really an elite strike force who seek to take the war to the IRA. And there's a huge impact, obviously, on civilians as well. So if you throw all of those ingredients into the melting pot, what you get in Ireland by 1920 and the autumn of 1920 is truly toxic. When it comes to the battlefield, is this a struggle like many anti-imperial insurgencies where the big cities are important? So perhaps, you know, you're Cork and you're Dublin. Or is this a rural thing? Are

we seeing like Mayo, Kerry, West Cork, those part of the countries just become no-go areas for British troops? Well, the problem for Britain is that there isn't a battlefield. And the kind of warfare that they have been used to, particularly during the First World War, you know, open combat, you know, the very existence of a battlefield, that doesn't exist in Ireland. The dynamics are very much based on regional realities. You refer to certain counties there in the province of Munster, you consider Cork and Kerry or the west of Ireland in Mayo. These are areas that are very, very difficult to control for Britain. They're rural communities. A lot of the police barr They're rural communities. A lot of the police barracks are very isolated. A lot of the British Crown forces are holed up in their barracks

and then they come out and they're attacked and the fighters disappear into the surrounding terrain. So it's a very complicated theatre of war for Britain. And of course, the IRA does not have the resources, does not have the manpower that the British have, but they have knowledge of the terrain. They have a degree of support from the local community who are prepared to harbour them and assist them. But that's not always, of course, a blanket endorsement. So it is a complicated type of warfare. And you've got to break Ireland down into different regions to try and study the impact of the War of Independence. There are parts of the country that were relatively quiet, but those particular counties, the warfare is more intense. And then the cities, of course, are important. I mean, Dublin was a small, compact

city. It still is. It has a warren of streets that the IRA can use very effectively. And that's where the intelligence war becomes interesting, because they were trying to identify where British intelligence agents were based in Dublin City, what boarding houses or hotels or lodgings they may have been staying in. And of course, they had a very detailed knowledge, the IRA, of the movement of the enemy. And that was something that Britain couldn't master to the same extent. Is it important that we're now in the 20th century, we're now in a sort of proto-democratic landscape? These insurgencies, traditionally, both in Ireland and elsewhere in the world, it would have just been waited out, shoot enough people, go on punitive raids, and then business as normal.

Is there something, is the British government now finding this enemy it can't defeat because of the propaganda battle, because of the reputation, or because of the idea that these sort of methods of counterinsurgency are no longer acceptable, particularly in that period against, quote unquote, a white race? were acceptable, particularly in that period against, quote unquote, a white race. But I mean, Britain prided itself on being a liberal power. And I mean, David Lloyd George obviously has his attention focused on a variety of different matters in 1920, and Ireland is only one of them. But his contention before 1920 is that the problem in Ireland is a policing problem, you know, that it's not a military problem. Now, he is getting representations from senior military figures, including General Neville McCready, who's the commander of the British forces in Ireland, who are saying, well, hang on a sec now. This has moved beyond a policing problem and you have to respond in kind.

But to respond in kind would be for the British government to admit that the problem in Ireland is much bigger than they're prepared to admit. And they actually ignore it a lot. It's a struggle for some of the Dublin Castle personnel, ignore it a lot. It's a struggle for some of the Dublin Castle personnel, Dublin Castle being the centre of British administration in Ireland, to get the British cabinet interested enough in Ireland or focused enough on Ireland. And David Lloyd George, of course, in November 1920, before Bloody Sunday, refers to the IRA as a small murder gang and asserts that we have murder by the throat. So that was part of the British propaganda effort effort to maintain that the IRA was just a small crowd of cowardly assassins and that, you know, this was not serious conventional warfare.

But it becomes more and more difficult to keep the bad news off the pages of the newspapers. I think one of the underwritten aspects of this, the role of journalists, British journalists in Ireland at that time, people like JL Hammond from the Manchester Guardian, the forerunner of today's Guardian, or Hugh Martin of the Daily News, they're sending back objective reports as to what is happening in Ireland and the burning of villages and the shootings and the impact on civilians and the house raids. And that's a

narrative that's completely at odds with what is being asserted publicly. So yes, that becomes very, very difficult for Britain. Sinn Féin has quite a sophisticated propaganda outfit. They have what's called the Irish Bulletin, which was their version of what was happening in Ireland, which has been sent to newspapers worldwide in 1920 and 1921. And that begins to, again, compromise the British assertions of Ireland's just being a minor irritant. And ultimately, it's events like Bloody Sunday, most notoriously Bloody Sunday, that lead to screaming headlines that suggest Britain is not containing this problem. Well, let's come to Bloody Sunday itself. People might be familiar with the Bloody Sunday. There have been too many Bloody Sundays in the world,

let alone in Ireland over the last century. This one, we're not talking about 1972 in Derry. We are talking about November 21, 1920. And as you mentioned, Michael Collins and his laser focus on British intelligence, that's where this particular story begins probably, is it? Michael Collins decided that he was going to appoint what becomes known as the squad. These are units of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA who are charged with the task of taking out those who have the potential to penetrate the IRA, the British intelligence agents or suspected intelligence agents. Now, we don't know exactly how many British intelligence agents were in Dublin or in Ireland in 1920. You know, by its very nature, this kind of work is obviously not

advertised by those who were engaged in it. But it's estimated that there would have been in the region of 100 British intelligence agents in Ireland by the end of 1920. And Michael Collins begins to use his various contacts, including in Dublin Castle, to try and compile lists of who they are and where they are and their movements. And he makes a very, very audacious decision to try and take them out on the morning of the 21st of November 1920. And these are very young IRA members. They're deliberately picked because they don't have families. They're young volunteers who are told about the seriousness of these planned engagements. And the idea is to be audacious, is to take the war to British intelligence and to try and take

them out in one fell swoop. And that's what happens on the morning. I mean, the scenes that were witnessed in the various addresses that these IRA members go to, there were hotels and lodging houses, are horrific. Many of them are pajama clad. This is not expected. This kind of thing hasn't happened before because they haven't tried to do this in the actual residences of these suspected agents. And it wasn't about pinpoint selective successful assassination. I mean, mistakes were made, nerves, they betrayed some of the IRA members, but they did manage to kill 14 of them. And sometimes those who were killed, because they were in such intimate domestic settings, they were killed in front of

loved ones as well. So some terrifying scenes. And that caused shock and panic in Dublin at that time. The news begins to spread across the city of the events of the morning. And the question then is how it is going to be responded to. And that leads to the second half of Bloody Sunday. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt. And avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal

Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. And that second half is very different to the kind of surgical assassinations or surgical strikes of the morning.

In fact, it couldn't be more different. No, I mean, Croke Park was the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, which was Ireland's largest sporting organisation, which promoted Gaelic football and hurling. And there was a match that had been planned for the afternoon. And again, you know, the GAA had the capacity to generate very considerable crowds of spectators, such as the popularity of its sports. And this was a football match between Tipperary and Dublin, who were two of the strongest football teams in Ireland at that time. And it was a challenge match.

It was a friendly match. In the region of 10,000 people were in attendance at Croke Park, just off the city centre in Dublin. And the match begins. Park, just off the city centre in Dublin. And the match begins. And it seems the original plan was to send British Crown forces, and this is a combination of Royal Irish Constabulary, Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, to send them in to the grounds because of what had happened in the morning, to stop the game and to search all of the men in attendance to see if they could gather any evidence as to their involvement in the

events of the morning. But that doesn't happen. What happens instead is that when they arrive around the perimeter of Cog Park, discipline completely breaks down. And whether it's rage or a lust for revenge or just plain fury, it manifests itself in just 90 seconds of shooting. And it's indiscriminate shooting. And 14 people are killed. There's a stampede. Some people are crushed and impaled. Some people are shot in the back. It's a mixture of children, one woman and men, indiscriminate shooting for 90 seconds. And that damage is inflicted or damage is inflicted to that scale. And again, the scenes were absolutely horrendous. I mean, much more of a sense now of the personal stories behind the individual victims. They were mostly working

class people from very humble abodes in the vicinity of Croke Park and Dublin. And the terror was felt across the city. And later that evening, there are three further killings when two IRA men who had been taken into custody and another individual who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were tortured and murdered. And that meant that the death toll on Bloody Sunday was 31. So 31 people killed in a single day in Dublin. And if you look at the contemporary newspaper reports of these events, they use words like Holocaust and slaughter and massacre. And that was the scale of what happened. You refer to Bloody Sunday there in 1972, you know, the second Bloody Sunday, that was often referred to as generating this communal wound in Ireland. But that was true

of the first Bloody Sunday also. So this is a terrifying day. It really is a day of terror. And 1920 is remembered in Irish nationalist history as the year of terror. One of the more infamous moments is an armoured car fired, allegedly over the heads of the crowd, but inevitably, you know, where do those bullets carry? So this was not just individuals firing. This would have felt like state terror.

Oh, there's no doubt about that. And you see, this has been bubbling under the surface for quite some time, you know, the frustration of the ground forces, but also the lack of a unified security command in Ireland at that time. I mean, Britain's failings were many on that front. Who was in charge? You know, who's in charge of discipline? The Black and Tans have developed a reputation for indiscipline and brutality. And here we now have, you know, the auxiliaries who are engaging in the same. Who is in charge is a key question. And, you know, whatever about the intelligence effort and the blow that was inflicted in the morning, that afternoon's events really highlighted the lack of coordination and the lack of control over the British Crown forces in Ireland at that time. It's fascinating. I have people on this podcast queuing up every week to tell me that the British army in 1918, the famous victories against the German army, was probably pound for pound the best British army that had ever been in history. And yet, two years later, this is just like the most shambolic, indiscriminate,

indisciplined rabble that was attempting to fight this war in Ireland. It's a mystery. It's not a mystery, though, in the sense that if you look at some of the accounts we have that have survived in, say, the Imperial War Museum in London, for example, of British Crown forces who were in Ireland at that time, you know, they do underline how different Ireland was. They didn't understand the Irish question. They didn't understand the communities that they were supposedly there to police or protect. There's also a degree of racism, inevitably. I mean, they have their own inbuilt prejudices about the Irish anyway. And, you know, much of what happens confirms for them the impossibility of dealing with the Irish.

So it's a combination of all of those things. for them the impossibility of dealing with the Irish. So it's a combination of all of those things. But we also know now that there were regular trips to London by the top military brass in Ireland who were saying, this is what we need to do to deal with this problem. You know, we need to sweep across the country in a much more severe way. But what their political masters were telling them was that that was not acceptable for political reasons. So what the military wanted to do in Ireland, they were not allowed to do for political reasons. But they the military wanted to do in Ireland, they were not allowed to do for political reasons. But they still end up falling between two different stools. So it is a complete mess. Bloody Sunday does lead to a reorganisation of the British effort and indeed of British

intelligence. And it was probably better than it was given credit for in some Republican narratives. And there was also, I suppose, a reluctance to acknowledge some of the mistakes that the IRA made on Bloody Sunday morning because you had to keep intact the founding myth and the glorious myth of how the Irish state was created. So a lot of those complications were glossed over. But at the same time, this is also an event, I think like the later Bloody Sunday as well, that does force a reassessment of the long-term objectives.

Downing Street wants this problem off its table. An event on the scale of Bloody Sunday makes that more likely. It does lead to a reassessment. What are we doing in Ireland and how can we get a way out? And we already know that even before Bloody Sunday, there were some tentative links being established with senior Sinn Féiners, some who were regarded as more moderate within the Sinn Féin movement. Arthur Griffith, for example, who was the vice president of Sinn Féin at that time, he was in communication with C.J. Phillips in the British Foreign Office. And C.J. Phillips referred to the slender link that has been established. So could there be a path to dialogue. And remember, Eamon de Valera, the president of Sinn Féin, is actually in America at that time. So there's that kind of international effort by Sinn Féin. This event gives them a further opportunity to decry the British mistakes. But there are always things going on behind the scenes. And there are always those who are active in trying to open up channels of negotiation, including Andy Cope, who is an assistant undersecretary, who's establishing links with Sinn Féiners and the Catholic Church, to try and open up that path.

And I think Bloody Sunday reinforces the determination to try and make more of that. You're right. Of course, it's not a mystery. I mean, we know from our own times, US and Allied forces, it's one thing to defeat conventional enemies in the field. And in 1918, that meant crashing through the Hindenburg Line with brilliant artillery support. It's quite another thing to practice very complex counterinsurgency. And to be seen from our own era can make one military look like two very different militaries. Can I ask, you've mentioned the effect out of London.

I'm sure David Lloyd George is the old radical. The last thing he wanted to be doing was fighting a repressive war within the borders. Well, I'll tell you, he had very little sympathy for the intelligence agents who were killed on Bloody Sunday morning. He was actually quite scathing about them. But beyond Lloyd George that you mentioned, and indeed the British and Irish leaders, what about the sort of war for hearts and minds? You know, we were always told that the post office uprising in 1916 was actually, the response in Ireland was mixed until the rebels were shot in the prison courtyard there. Is that true of Bloody Sunday as well? Was this a moment when more and more of the Irish became convinced

that they didn't want anything to do with the British state? Well, it's not quite as black and white as that. You've got to remember there would have been a lot of revulsion about what had happened in the morning. Don't assume that all committed Irish Republicans approve what the IRA did on Bloody Sunday morning. I mean, this was taking the terror to a new level. And of course, this isn't about two equal sides. You know, this is not about an

equivalence between the Irish military effort and the British military effort. You know, the Irish are obviously dealing with great disadvantages in terms of resources and power. But nonetheless, there was still a concern about reaching this new level, that they were prepared to go in and kill people like that. But in a sense, what happened in the afternoon neutralised whatever misgivings or revulsion may have been felt about what had happened in the morning. And of course, there were always those who were pleased at a British body count, no matter how it was performed. It is quite a mix, but certainly an event on the scale of Bloody Sunday just reinforced for many Irish people the complete inability of Britain to understand the nature of the Irish question or to recognise the validity of the Irish claim for self-determination, which let's not forget, of course, had been endorsed by the December 1918 general election. I mean, Sinn Féin had a political mandate to achieve an Irish republic. The question is how you combine that political mandate with the military operations.

And, you know, there isn't a always centralized control of the Irish Republican effort. A lot of the soldiers within the Irish Republican Army think very little of the politicians and are not necessarily listening to them. So it's quite a difficult balancing act. But what someone like Eamon de Valera believed was that you needed spectaculars, so-called IRA spectaculars, to shine an international light on Ireland, to embarrass and even humiliate the British government. So getting that balance right is very, very tricky. And of course, Bloody Sunday is by no means the end of it. I mean, when we talk about what we would call today a kind of a peace process, when we talk about the channels towards peace or dialogue, we don't get it through until July 1921. So Bloody Sunday does focus minds, but there's still a lot of this war to be played out.

And only a week after Bloody Sunday, the IRA in Cork killed 17 auxiliaries in Kilmichael in Cork in a single ambush, in a single event single event and again that was a huge body count for Britain and hugely embarrassing so there are still a lot of tragedies to play out but I think at the same time Bloody Sunday was a turning point. Well thank you for talking to us about that turning point and it would be wonderful to have you back on and talk about that peace process into 2021 and the eventual partition of the island of Ireland. Have you got a book out at the moment? Tell us about it. Well, at the moment I'm working on the Civil War. We're living through this decade of commemorations

and centenaries. So there'll be a lot of focus over the next year or two on the end of the Irish War of Independence, the beginning of dialogue with Britain, the signing of the treaty. And the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, of course, led to civil war. So that's where I'm heading next. Cheery times, not. Cheery times. Well, thank you very much indeed for joining us. Lovely to talk to you, Dan. Hi everyone, thanks for reaching the end of this podcast.

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