WEBVTT - Part Two: Hunger Strikes: From Ireland to Palestine 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:06.840 Hello, and welcome to Ryntrall and Anderson's squirrel Chasing Hour 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:10.320 Hell Yeah, podcast in which the dogs Rintrall and Anderson 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:13.480 chase squirrels, or at least make noises at squirrels in 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.120 the background while we record a podcast called cool People 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:18.200 Who did Cool Stuff. It's all very texture. 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.840 It's called yea yeah, Sorry you introduce me yet. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.200 Well that's Scharene Sharen. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.479 Lanny Nis is here post him ethnically ambiguous host. It 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:34.760 could happen here, poet, filmmaker, friend icon. 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:38.599 I did it, but we're great. Thank you. 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.960 Thank you first and foremost a friend first and foremost 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.440 a friend second, second, foremost. I forgot to mention it. 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:47.960 Mother of Bunny the cat, Mother of Bunny the cat. 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:53.559 I have a cat. Okay, so it's the how. 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:55.600 Does Bunny you feel about squirrels? 0:00:56.080 --> 0:01:01.840 She loves to watch. Yeah, she'll she will be the 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:04.800 observer to the squirrel chasing listeners. 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:07.759 I want to brag about Margaret for a second listeners. 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:12.000 Before we started recording part one, Bunny was Bunny was 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:16.080 being bad, and so I called Bunny bad. Bunny and 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:18.720 Margaret knew that reference. And I just want to give 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:20.120 credit where credits due. 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:24.200 Yeah, not only did she know, but she knew that 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.040 Bad Bunny was Porto Rican. 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:27.360 There was there was like. 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.560 There, Yeah, it's because Bad Bunny is done work with 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:35.600 Cardi B and Cardi B supports sex workers. 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.680 Yeah, so that's a great way to know who Bad Bunny. 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.520 Is and and Bad Bunny is actual. So my parents 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.240 have a bunny that like an actual bunny rabbit that 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:47.520 this is so much information that the listeners don't need. 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.440 But there's a bunny that lives in their yard and 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:55.440 my parents leave out seeds and appropriate bunny and squirrel 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.080 litle and deer food for they live in the woods. 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.960 And I got them to name the bunny Benito, which 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.240 has been bunny's actual name, and so they but but 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.440 they've now changed it to bun Eto. And that's just 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.960 a little bit about why I am the way I am. 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:12.680 Honestly that. 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.519 Benito is great on its own for it bunny, honestly, 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.480 I know, and it ends in an osna. Bunnies are 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:21.840 the best. I love bunnies. 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:25.160 But yeah, that that has been unnecessary animal talk, but 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:27.079 also necessary animal talk. 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.639 Someone out there appreciates it. I know at least one person. 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.120 And everyone else has been pressing for fifteen seconds. 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:38.480 And that's fine, okay, Sorry, No, I'll just bring up 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:41.720 animals every like minute or so, so they'll just keep skipping, 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:43.480 you know what I mean, Like they'll talk about stuff 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.320 and then they're still talking about fucking cats. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:50.280 And then we can think, Yeah, like the things that 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.280 we can form relationships with that aren't people that make 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:57.800 our lives enriched. How boring is what people will say 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.960 because they have no heart or soul or something. The 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.280 other voice you've heard is Sophie. 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:12.200 Oh Ship, it's me, mother of Anderson yea of podcasts, 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:16.920 podcast podcast, friend of Benito, the Bunny. 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:17.240 Friend of. 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:22.400 Our audio engineering is done by Ian Hi. 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:24.080 Ian I I the. 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:27.280 Father of an animal. 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:28.880 Yeah, Ian, I don't. 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.600 I don't think Ian has, but I feel free to 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:33.639 put in a fun animal fact here if you're bored, 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:35.800 and if you're not, and if you're not bored and 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:37.520 you don't feel like putting in a fun animal fact, 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:38.400 that's also okay. 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:45.160 But you don't have anything, you know? We love? Ian 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:45.960 is the point. 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:48.960 Yeah, yes, but you have to say hi, Ian before 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:55.080 we can continue. We've made a rule. Everyone has all right, 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:57.560 And our music is written for us by young woman. 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.000 And this is part two of a two part series 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:07.400 about hunger strikes, the last recourse of the desperate against 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:12.200 their oppressors. Where we last left our heroes, the Irish 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.520 Republican Army, who are a lot of people's not heroes, 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.040 but are in a situation where they also feel like 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.560 they have no recourse. They have just been told that 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:21.560 they were not to be treated as prisoners of war 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:26.400 anymore in Her Majesty's prison Maze, but instead as common 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:31.000 criminals fed to the minotaur, even though many of them 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.160 were getting picked up without charges, evidence or trial, which 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.480 is a fun way to find yourself a prisoner is 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:38.320 to not get accused of any crime. 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:40.159 Yeah. 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:44.200 The first inmate to protest this was a guy named 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.760 Kieran Nugent. And what led him to a life of 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:52.400 the IRA Well, maybe I'm not certain, but I think 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:54.480 there's like one part of his past that I can 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:57.760 think might have radicalized him. It's when he was fifteen 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.159 years old standing on the street with a friend when 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.840 a car stopped asked them for directions. When they started 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.719 to answer, someone in the car pulled out a submachine 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.200 gun and shot him eight times and killed his friend. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:16.560 He survived getting shot eight times as a fifteen year old, 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.719 and I can't imagine why he went and joined the 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:21.760 IRA after that. 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:24.920 Was there not that there's ever a reason to do 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.679 any of that, but was there any motive? 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:31.280 Not that I'm aware of. I'm under the impression it 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.520 was literally like, let's just go kill those Catholic kids. Wow. 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:38.719 So when he was sixteen, he joined the IRA. He 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.839 spent five months in jail without being convicted of anything, 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:44.640 and then he was arrested again, I think when he 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:46.520 was seventeen, and this time he got a conviction. He 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:50.599 spent he served nine months. When he was eighteen, he 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:53.800 got arrested for hijacking a bus. He was the first 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:56.400 person sent to the Minotaur's maze after they decided to 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:59.720 stop treating paramilitaries like prisoners of war. And so he 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:01.480 showed up and they're like, all right, put on your 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.120 prison clothes, and he's like, I'm not a fucking criminal. 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:06.200 I'm a fucking freedom fighter. I'm not I'm not going 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.880 to do that. Or more specifically, he said that if 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:10.760 they wanted him to wear a uniform, they would have 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:14.080 to nail it to his back. He wore a blanket instead. 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:20.680 This gets called the blanket protest. Very direct namers at 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:22.320 this particular juncture. 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.839 Also too cute for my liking. The troubles was cute, 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:29.880 you know, blanket protest. I understand what it's doing. It's 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:30.560 very literal. 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:32.600 But yeah, terrible. 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.800 Things have cute names, and that makes me unsettled. 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:38.080 Yeah, I'd be like if Bunny wasn't your cat but 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:42.920 instead like a giant creature in the woods with red 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.440 eyes that sings the British national anthem. 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:47.160 I don't know, like that is terrify. 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:49.120 I know, what if there's like a monster in your 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.960 woods that just like say nationalist of Yeah, totally. 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:57.440 So. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.839 The second prisoner to join the blanket protest was a woman, 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:02.880 so of course she has left out of most of 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.320 the narratives. I like had the whole script written where 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:06.680 I was like, and then the second prisoner is and 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.640 as this other guy, and then later I was like, no, 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:13.800 this other person was the second person to join the protest. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.600 She was in a different prison for women, and she 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.320 had a version of the best name ever. Her name 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.840 was mari Ed, which is Irish from Margaret, and she 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.840 was in prison for fourteen years for bombing a hotel 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.080 that was being used by British soldiers, and at trial 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:32.960 she refused to acknowledge the colonial court. 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:36.880 Well about us cross the board, check check check. 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:41.680 Yeah, she fucking she goes hard. The third prisoner to 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.320 join the blanket protest was a man named Jackie McMullen. 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:47.600 He is usually marked as the second because why would 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.280 women matter, even though women have been active participants in 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:52.400 Irish struggles since literally forever. 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:53.880 But women are at people. 0:07:54.520 --> 0:08:00.000 Yeah, totally, yeah, Jackie. This guy, Jackie had been arrested 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:04.240 twenty times as a teenager. He has a quote about it. 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.040 Every male aged thirteen to sixty five would have been arrested, 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.200 the vast majority for screening. Like basically they would just 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.160 arrest every Catholic they saw to see if they were 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:14.920 like opt no good or whatever. Right, So he've been 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:16.480 arrested twenty fucking times. 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.200 So we still don't really know how they know they're Catholic. Really, 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:20.720 maybe like. 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:25.120 The neighborhoods they're in or again someone knows, yeah, but 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:29.160 I don't know. The neighborhoods were increasingly I think since 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:31.960 nineteen sixty six, the neighborhoods were increasingly segregated, were actually 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.920 going to talk about some people who like actually had 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:37.080 grown up in very like mixed neighborhoods and were perfectly 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:39.680 fine and everything was happy until nineteen sixty six when 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:45.440 Protestants started like self segregating away from the Catholics and stuff. 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.360 So Jackie was a freedom fighter with the IRA. He 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:53.000 had a nickname. His nickname was Teapot. Love it because 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:54.720 one of his tops of one of his ears had 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:59.360 been shot off. Well he was, I know, they don't 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:01.360 fuck with the guy named Teapot who has a revolver 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.280 and is a missing part of his ear. When you 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:07.079 look up photos of all of these guys now, like 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:08.880 the ones who survive all of this, they're just like 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.120 they're just some old Irish guy. It's like real cute. 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:17.640 There's just like, oh there's anyone's yeah yeah. And so 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.000 Teapot had been caught with a revolver when he was twenty. 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.160 His trial was only forty minutes long. He also refused 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.800 to recognize the court. When he was in prison, his mother, 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:30.080 alongside other Irish women, changed herself to the railings outside 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:35.720 the Prime Minister's house in London. Wow, and by Christmas 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:38.360 that year, So a few months later it started in September, 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.160 there were forty prisoners wearing blankets, mostly IRA and the 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:43.680 Irish National Liberation Army. 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.600 Folks, we're not to acquire these blankets. 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:48.880 It's like what they have in prison. It's like the 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:51.920 it's the blanket that they're like, all. 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:54.040 Right at or airplane blanket. 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.200 Yeah, probably whatever. The whatever your fucking scratchy wool blanket 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:58.079 you have in prison. 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.640 Is okay, So they all have like they access to 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:02.640 get a blanket. I guess what I'm saying, Okay. 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.520 Yeah. By nineteen seventy eight, they escalated from the blanket 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:13.199 protest to the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to wash 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.040 and then started smearing their shit and menstrual blood on 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:17.120 the walls of their cells. 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:20.320 Okay, I'm not mad about it. 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:25.080 No, I mean whatever, whatever fucking works, yeah. 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:29.240 Or whatever. I mean, that's fucking disgusting. Yeah, if you're 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:32.040 not going to get shamed into action, maybe you'll get 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:33.360 disgusted into action. 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.199 Yeah, totally, Like I don't want Yeah, it's probably just 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:37.520 to get the guards to be like, man, I don't 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:38.040 want to deal with this. 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:39.000 Yeah, exactly. 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:40.320 I don't get paid enough for this shit. 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:42.360 Yeah. 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:46.480 They had five demands and their demands weren't freedom for Ireland, 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.360 like that's what they were fighting for as their cause, right, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.200 But this sort of strike is usually about specific conditions, 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.480 and specifically they had five demands related to essentially prisoner 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:00.520 of war status. They demanded the right to not wear 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.199 a prison uniform, the right to not do prison work, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.120 the right of free association with other prisoners and to 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:10.360 organize educational and recreational pursuits. The right to one visit, 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:14.320 one letter and one parcel per week, and full restoration 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:18.280 of remission lost through the protest. Basically, it's like, while 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:21.600 they were protesting, the state was like, well, this doesn't 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.240 count as your life time served because you're like not 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:29.679 being nice outside of prison. People start organizing for their support. 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.080 The kind of at the beginning of this people are like, yeah, 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:34.440 I mean, I guess that matters, but what really matters 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.120 is like the struggle, you know, and then people were like, actually, no, 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:43.240 those people in prison matter outside prison. By eighteenth not 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.040 eighteen seventy nine nineteen seventy nine, the usage writing about 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:50.480 the eighteenth century nineteenth fuck whatever. Nineteen seventy nine, the 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:55.120 Northern Irish socialist politician Bernadette mccawsky is a working class 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.840 Republican woman, because republican means socialist at this point in 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:03.240 time in history, in this particular place, because political labels 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.880 change what they mean depending on context. She started to 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:11.160 fight for folks she'd been present at Bloody Sunday. Later 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.520 in nineteen eighty one, people break into her house trying 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:16.800 to assassinate her. She gets shot nine times in front 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:18.120 of her children, and she lives. 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:19.840 Oh my god. 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.360 She was like, all right, kid, you got shot eight times. 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:26.960 I'm gonna get not shot nine times and live. So 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:29.240 she's working to support the prisoners. This is before she 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:34.920 gets shot. In nineteen eighty the Dirty Strike goes Hunger Strike. 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.959 One hundred and forty eight prisoners in the men's prison volunteer, 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.760 but they pick seven of themselves total as a symbolic 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:44.720 thing about the number of folks who signed the nineteen 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.920 sixteen Declaration of the Republic. When kind of the Easter 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.280 Rising sort of kicks off what leads to the independence 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:56.160 the semi independence of Ireland. At the nearby women's prison, 0:12:56.240 --> 0:13:02.680 three women join, including our girl Marriod, and later just 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:07.240 to end her saga. Unfortunately, in nineteen eighty eight, she's 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.600 killed during her arrest In Joe Bralter, she's trying with 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.079 some IRA friends to car bombs some British soldiers when 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.360 they get caught, and inquiries later show that she was 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:18.480 actually illegally shot because she had been trying to comply 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.760 with her arrest when they killed her. Wow, But for 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:23.640 now she's hunger striking. 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.040 Is it like something on top of like, it's not 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:29.200 replacing the dirty strike. 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.400 It's like in addition to they might have stopped smearing 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:37.240 their shit on their walls. I'm not sure. They probably 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.280 were pretty excited to take a shower. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.520 Yeah, I mean it's it's not great for the person 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:46.599 doing the dirty strike either, I'm sure. Yeah. 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:48.680 Yeah. And then the hunger strike is also it's just 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:55.040 a it's an escalation, you know. And and they win 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.400 this hunger strike in nineteen eighty. The strike lasts fifty 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.360 three days, but in the end the government blinks. They're 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.640 afraid of the backlash loget if they kill this prisoner. 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.040 Which is another thing that nonviolence pairs really well with 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.560 is violence m H. It was the threat of violence 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:13.719 that caused the British government to concede to this non 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:17.080 violent tactic. So the government say all right, fine, we'll 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.880 meet you five demands. But then the government being a government. 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.960 I don't know if you knew this. Sometimes governments don't 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:27.080 hold their promises. 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:29.040 Oh my god, are you serious? 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.880 Yeah, I know it. It changes the law, don't. 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:38.520 Follow the law. People don't care about morals or or anything. 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.640 Yeah, you'd think. I mean, obviously there's no system by 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:43.560 which people would get elected if they weren't honest. 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:48.200 And my god, I really thought, I really thought governments 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:50.120 could help us. 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:53.120 Yeah, well, this is probably the only time in place 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:58.280 where a government has done this. Okay, great, So they 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:01.800 start another hunger strike on March first, nineteen eighty one, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:07.120 and the IRA has a military command structure, right, the 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.200 officer commanding of the imprisoned IRA members is a guy 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:13.560 who's in prison and his name is Bobby Sands, and 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:15.520 he's like, well, I'm in charge, and so I'm going 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:17.200 to do the honorable thing, and I'm going to go first. 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:22.440 So he stops eating, and you know, they're like, we 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:24.920 are political prisoners. We will be treated as such. They 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.600 have the five demands, the same five demands they've ostensibly 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:31.520 already won, but have not. Bobby Sands, he grew up 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.000 in a mixed neighborhood Protestant Catholic neighborhood. But when he 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.120 was twelve in nineteen sixty six, all of his Protestant 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:39.600 friends stopped talking to him. I think their families basically 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.840 made them ice him out. As an adult, he tried 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.880 to just go be a guy, right, and he went 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:47.960 to get work as a coach builder, which is a 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.200 busmaker in American English. I had a double check. 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:53.560 He thought building coaches to like go to the NBA 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:54.120 or anything. 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:54.400 I know. 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.280 I was like, oh, okay, okay. Whereas I was thinking 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.320 it was like horse drawn carriages, they still had horse 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:00.000 drawn carriage. 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:05.120 You know, wait, what is it really say it against bus? 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:06.800 A bus? 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.120 Yeah, he made buses bus where he tried to make buses, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.800 but a bunch of guys wearing fucking like paramilitary Protestant 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.240 armbands who he worked with. The word that gets used. 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:20.600 The verb they used is harassed. They harassed him into quitting, 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.080 And by harassed, I mean they stuck a gun in 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.920 his face and told him to fuck off. And his 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.600 family and almost all the other Catholics in the family 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:34.160 were driven out of their homes at gunpoint. So he's 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:39.600 like all right Ira time he bombs a furniture store. 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:41.880 I have literally no idea why. I'm sure he had 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.480 a reason. And then he gets in a shootout with 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.680 the cops and he gets sentenced to the Minotaur's Maze. 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.840 And then March first, nineteen eighty one, he begins to 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:57.760 hunger strike. More prisoners join at staggered intervals. Basically the 0:16:57.800 --> 0:16:59.640 idea is that if we join at different times, there's 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:02.800 always going to be different prisoners at different lengths of it, 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:05.760 basically because they know that they're doing this until they die. 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:10.080 Right, So so nothing really changed after the first one, right, 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:12.080 so what did how did it end? 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:12.320 Then? 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:13.800 Per se? Like what did what? 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:15.399 They were like, Oh, we're going to meet all your 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:18.040 demands and then they were like, oh right we win. Yeah, 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:19.560 then they just didn't okay. 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:19.720 Got it? 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.240 Yeah. And so by doing this as staggered intervals, they 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.800 have different people at different stages of it. So instead 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.800 of everyone dying all at once, people die at different intervals. 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.199 And the reason that we know so this is like 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.000 the famous hunger strike in Ireland. There's a bunch their 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.080 hunger strikes have been work going on in Ireland. I 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.600 didn't write them all down but since nineteen seventeen, Like 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:47.600 it is, as long as there's been people fighting for 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:49.480 an Ireland, it probably goes back way while, as we 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.359 talked about, it goes way the fuck back. While he 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.880 was two months into the hunger strike, Bobby Sands ran 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.280 for the British House of Commons basically like ran for 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:05.200 government in Northern Ireland and he won. He won, he 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.600 was in the prison. How is he able to run? Well, 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:13.240 they ended up passing the law after this that says 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:22.040 that you can't run for British Yeah, and so he 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.000 runs and he gets a seat in a House of Commons, 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:26.800 he's not allowed to sit it. It doesn't get him 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:29.640 out of prison, right, And he's also two months into 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.200 a hunger strike. So it's a protest vote basically. It's 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:34.520 like people are like, well, we're going to vote for 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:38.440 this dying guy because we support his cause and that's 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.880 how we will show it. Margaret Thatcher, who is trying 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.639 to give Margaret's a bad name, said, crime is crime. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:49.879 There's no special concessions, like we're not gonna treat anyone 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:51.760 like prisoner as a war and this guy can't sit 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.720 even though he's been elected. Fuck democracy, you know, and 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.560 winning an election will starving yourself is a really good 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:03.400 way to get media attention for your hunger strike. It's 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:04.920 also a good way to get the UK to pass 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.160 a law specifically for make sure no one ever does 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.280 what you do again. And this is actually the reason 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:12.199 that they hadn't really thought about this before. I think 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:14.600 is that this is when the IRA came around to 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.160 electoralism as a strategy. Before that, they were absentationists, right, 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.240 they refused to vote, and then eventually they're like, all right, fine, 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:25.399 we'll just start fucking voting and nationalists because we actually 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:27.120 are the majority of people here. 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:27.639 You know. 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.480 On his sixty sixth day of hunger striking, Bobby Sands, 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:36.760 who was twenty seven years old, died. No more than 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.920 one hundred thousand people came to his funeral. France, the 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:43.679 Margaret Thatcher was like fuck you, I don't care. She 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:45.360 wrote a whole bunch of stuff basically being like, he's 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.160 an evil terrorist trying to blackmail us with his life. 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:50.040 Such a bad margaret. 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:51.880 Yeah sorry, no, I mean. 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.200 I'm sorry that you're Margaret. And yeah she has that name. 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:58.000 That's not fair. 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.560 I know, we got called a lot there. God give 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:02.840 her a different name, just to take it back for 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:07.719 the Margarets monster stature. Yeah, well, I'll think about it. 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.399 Sorry that thatchue Kanye's baddy. Apparently I've learned on the 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:13.080 show that baddye means good. 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.080 So no, baddie means like like Cardi B's a baddy. 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:18.560 Yeah, no, no, no, no no. 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:22.240 I Ian was was like I've said. Ian texted me 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:24.879 after editing that episode, was like, I was like, I 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.440 was so confused, and then you explained it to Margaret 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:28.760 and then it mads it. 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:32.960 In my mind. Baddy is like the are we the 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.480 Baddy sketch where the Nazis have to admit that they're 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:41.760 that might be on the wrong side. No, anyway, no, anyway. 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:45.720 We've time has progressed since then. I suppose I am 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:46.400 now aware. 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.959 Yeah, do you know what else you should be aware of? 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:51.400 That it's a time for an ad break. 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:56.840 Oh well, if you want to be a batty, you 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:03.720 should wear clothing that is advertised. You know, actually, whether 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:06.240 or not these companies advertise clothing, you should try to 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.560 buy clothing from them. You should write them and say 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.760