WEBVTT - What were the IRA hunger strikes? 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.640 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:17.000 There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and this is 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:20.640 Stuff you should Know, just the two of us doing 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.040 it together. We're hanging out. We're going to get to 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:28.000 the bottom of some stuff that's right and uh, you know, 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.360 the Grabster helped us out with this one a little 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.680 while ago. And it almost feels now like I was 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:39.159 purposefully sitting on it because of the the turnout of 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:45.040 the recent elections across the pond there. Okay, I'm not 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:50.400 familiar with what happened. Well, the shin fain Uh is 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:54.360 now in place as the largest party INO in the 0:00:54.800 --> 0:01:00.600 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, and this means that like this 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.520 is probably the best chance they've had in a long 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:08.520 time for reuniting Ireland. Oh wow, that'd be something. Wow, 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.520 you really did save it for just the right right moment, Chuck. 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:13.440 You know, it's just a couple of weeks ago and 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:15.400 I read a bunch of articles on it on the 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.800 likelihood and it seems um it seems like a hard 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:24.680 road still, but they definitely is. It's something they're interested 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:27.560 in I think that party that is, and polls are 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:30.640 very split. Yeah, I'm I'm interested to see how it 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.319 turns out. But that is pretty interesting that they're they're 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.080 finally in a position to do that, because that means 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.200 they've come a very long way in the last what 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.360 fifty or so years um. For those of you who 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:46.080 aren't familiar, shin Fan is considered the political wing of 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:49.560 the Irish Republican Army. And the reason we're talking about 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.760 either one of those is because we're talking about hunger strikes, 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.160 specifically a set of hunger strikes that took place at 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.240 the beginning of the twentieth century and then towards the 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.800 end of the twentieth century, and they are very much 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.080 associated with the I r A. In fact, if you 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.000 ask most people who are familiar with hunger strikes, they 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.080 will probably bring up the I ra A. It's like 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.880 that closely associated with them. Yeah, and you know, we 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:15.400 should just say we're we're gonna do our best to 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:17.280 get this right, but this is one of those that is, 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:24.600 you know, it's so fraught with emotion um on both sides. 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:26.520 So we just want to tell all of our friends 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:29.240 in Northern Ireland and all of our friends in the 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:33.720 Irish Republic that we were doing our best here, just 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:38.040 two Americans trying to understand a very deeply, long rooted, 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:43.480 oftentimes hostile situation. And for those of you, like Morrissey 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.880 with Irish blood but English heart, um, we will hopefully 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.480 not tick you off either. We're doing our best here, 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:54.040 just a couple of Yankee American Joe's doing what we can. 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:56.320 That's right. And we had a great time, by the 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.600 way in Dublin, and our only regret was not being 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:01.799 able to go and do a live show in Northern Ireland, 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.280 which I couldn't squeeze it in, but we'd love to 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.240 check it out one day, agreed. So you said that, like, 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.400 this is a very emotionally fraught subject, and that is 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:15.160 a gross understatement really, because um, what we're gonna focus 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:17.840 on are called the troubles, which started at the end 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:21.240 of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, but um, 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:24.560 really it goes back even further than that, and uh, 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.320 you can kind of place the beginning of hostilities in 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:33.840 sixteen o nine when the Protestant English came into Catholic 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.160 Ireland and said, hey, we're gonna take some of this land, 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.080 and we're going to take some of your land rights 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:43.120 away from those of you with documented land rights, and 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:47.960 we're going to set up some English enclaves and we're 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.280 just going to basically show up and and sit here 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.440 for a while. And that didn't sit very well with um, 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.560 the ethnic Irish or Gaelic people who lived in the area. 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:00.400 So that was one part of it. And I also 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.200 hit on another part two, Chuck, that we've got Protestant 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.880 and Catholic basically versus each other. Now, yeah, and you know, 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.119 I think Ed makes a good point that it's it's 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.760 not strictly about religion, but when you're over there and 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.479 you're talking Catholic and Protestant, it's so intertwined in the 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.600 fabric of kind of everything that goes on, including the politics, 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.160 that it's really, you know, there's no way you can 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:26.120 separate it. But it wasn't necessarily uh an Irish or 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:30.840 a well, I guess Irish Catholic, English Scottish Protestant battle, 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.720 but it is the seeds are there. So in particular 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:39.000 in the North of Ireland around Ulster, a bunch of 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:43.039 Protestant English and Scottish people kind of settled there over 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:47.039 the years and Um formed what's basically known or what 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.120 was known as the plantation of ulster Um. And so 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:57.200 over time you've got this largely Gaelic population inhabiting the 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:00.440 central and south part of Ireland and then a mixed 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:06.520 Catholic Gaelic and um English and Scottish Protestant kind of 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.680 group coexisting for better for worse in the northern part 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.520 of the country. And it's remarkable that it lasted like 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.279 this for you know, several centuries before it finally came 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:22.240 to a head at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yeah, 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.960 and as far as you know, how those people in 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.480 Northern Ireland that were that were kind of you know, 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:31.560 mixed in together felt about things then and how they 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.360 feel about things now, you know, Ed makes some kind 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.440 of sweeping statements that it's it's just kind of hard 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.160 to do, especially when you look at like modern day 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.960 polls on reunification and stuff like that. Those seeds run 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:46.120 deep and people are still kind of divided on it, 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.840 so you can't necessarily just say that, you know, these 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:56.360 days the people in Northern Ireland favor Protestantism and want 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:58.400 to be a part of the UK it's it's a 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.400 mixed bag, right, Yeah, I would guess to be akin 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:06.160 to UM, you know, people wanting to their state to secede, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.360 or the United States to break into five different countries 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.160 or something like that, although UM probably with much much 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.360 more emotional opinions about that. And then throw religion in there, 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.040 exactly just that little light thing. So, like I said, this, 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:25.000 this kind of precarious living situations living arrangement came to 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:29.240 a head UM all the way in nineteen twelve when 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:34.600 Irish nationalists kind of movement UM began. I think they 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.880 started before that, but in nineteen twelves they started really 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:43.120 pushing for Home rule, which is Irish um governing Ireland. 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.280 It's pretty much as simple as that, UM. And that 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.560 created the Home Rule crisis, and it was a crisis 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:51.920 as far as the British were concerned, because all of 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:55.719 a sudden, they're Irish people were saying, hey, we we 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.719 basically want you out and we want to rule Ireland. 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:02.000 So let's just end the four centuries of occupation, shall we. 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.080 The way you put it there just sounds very nice. Yeah, 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.279 I'm sure that's how they put in. Uh. This was 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.320 sort of put off a bit by World War One. 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:15.680 Obviously that kind of disrupted a lot of things. But eventually, 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.280 in nineteen sixteen, the Nationalists did revolt and it was 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:22.680 called the Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen. And this was 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:26.720 a bloody affair. It was I mean, I think there 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.840 were more than a dozen leaders executed, many thousands of 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.880 people in prison. It was just a it was a 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.240 brutal conflict. Uh, And that was just you know, that 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.880 kind of kick things off in nineteen sixteen. It continued 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.720 again in nineteen nineteen with what we know now is 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:45.240 the well, I guess what was called this then too, 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.120 the Anglo Irish War. And there were a lot of 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.200 sort of governmental policies going on during this time. The 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:58.040 Government of Ireland Act of nineteen twenty officially, as far 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.560 as they were concerned, created two Ireland's Northern Ireland and 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.400 what they called Southern Ireland that we're all still under 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.720 the rule of the UK and Great Britain. But Southern 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.119 Ireland was like, no, we're not. What is Southern Ireland 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.640 where the Irish Republic like, don't even call a Southern Ireland. Um. 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.920 So that actually kind of got translated into a treaty 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:23.040 UM that ended the Anglo Irish War. It was the 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:28.880 treaty that basically recognized Ireland as two separate nations. You've 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.840 got Ireland itself, which is again the central and southern 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.560 part of the country, and then you have Northern Ireland, 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:37.760 which is part of the United Kingdom. It's a totally 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:42.000 different country, um, at least geo politically speaking, it's a 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:45.880 totally different country. And again there's a big distinction between 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:50.800 Ireland and Northern Ireland and the population makeup because those Protestant, 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.240 Catholic and Scottish people that settled in the northern part 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:58.320 of Ireland over the centuries had um descendants. In those 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.880 descendants stayed um loyal to the Crown, they stayed Protestant, 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:07.760 and at times they they were more powerful than their 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:10.400 Catholic neighbors. So in the late sixties, by the time 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.959 the late sixties roll around and you've got to Ireland's 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:17.840 you have a Protestant elite, small minority of Protestants ruling 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.480 Northern Ireland, much to the chagrin of the Catholic Um 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.320 Gaelic people who lived there. Uh. And that kind of 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:28.960 set up there set the stage I guess for the 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:32.800 troubles that followed, yeah, and the troubles uh, and then 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.719 he said began in the late sixties. They carried through 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.840 till about nine more than I mean, the numbers kind 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.240 of very depending on you know, what you're looking at, 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:47.120 but at least thirty five hundred people died, fifty percent 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:51.360 of which were civilians. And these were you know, it 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.920 was a mess. There were paramilitary groups on both sides, 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:59.720 there were British military taking part, there were street battles, 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:02.120 there were bombings. I mean, this is the kind of 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.000 stuff that in the like when you and I were 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:06.800 growing up in the seventies and eighties, you know, this 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:08.480 was all over the news at the time, and it 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.960 was I had no idea. I didn't understand it at 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.480 all at the time, and it took you know, me 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:19.000 listening to a lot of you two and then trying 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.240 to educate myself over what was going on over the years. 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.199 But I don't think I fully really understood it until 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:25.240 like the past few days, when I really dug in 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:28.520 absolutely same here man. So one of the things that 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.800 kicked off those troubles you just described, um, was the 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:37.280 the Gaelic Catholics protesting the unfair rule as they saw 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:43.319 of the Protestant minority. And the problem is these protests 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:49.040 were kind of suppressed brutally by the Protestant government and 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.800 with the aid of the British military, British um police, 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:56.600 I believe, and that's that turned quickly into rioting and 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.960 then eventually, like you said, the paramilitary groups assembling and 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:06.040 basically guerrilla warfare breaking out in Northern Ireland. So imagine like, 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.800 you know, going to work one day and you're Catholic 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:13.200 and your co workers Protestant, and the next day you 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.520 guys are fighting each other on the street, um for 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:22.120 control of of your both of your country. Yeah, it's 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:24.320 it's it's nuts to think about it as an American 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:26.960 because like we can't fathom something like that, you know, 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:29.560 to Gen xers growing up in the in the Cold 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.040 War Reagan era, right, I mean, we're pretty far removed 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:34.760 from the Civil War here in the United States. This 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.280 is like civil war that took place in the early 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.040 seventies or started in the early seventies and continued for 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:43.240 almost thirty years. Yeah, and previous you know, we should 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.240 back up a little bit, I guess and talk about 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.680 the origins of the ira Uh. This had to do 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.480 with the Easter Rising that we talked about of nineteen sixteen. 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.079 It was initiated by what was called the Irish Volunteers 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:58.000 UH in nineteen sixteen, and by the twenties they were 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.480 known as the i RA, a UH Irish Republican Army, 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.560 and they fought a civil war in the early nineteen twenties. 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.079 In the nine nineteen twenty three there were a lot 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.360 of different nationalist factions fighting one another. One of these 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.960 was the IRA, and there was civil war going on 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.840 back then as well. So there's just been decades and 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.960 decades of unrest by the time the nineteen sixties roll around, Yeah, 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.880 and that nineteen twenties civil war um was in Ireland itself. 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.280 So after it became a sovereign nation, all those groups 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:31.440 that had fought the British started fighting each other to 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:33.160 figure out who was going to run the show from 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.480 then on. So the IRA that you and I think about, UM, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:39.439 that you know, we learned about from you two and 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.559 the news and the eighties and all that, Um, they're 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:45.920 the ones that you would call the provisional IRA, and 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:48.640 they formed out of the beginning of the troubles, those 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:51.640 protests and riots beginning in nineteen sixty nine. They were 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:54.880 one of the paramilitary groups that developed and they became 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.080 UM pretty famous in no small part because of the 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.600 hunger strikes they ended up carrying out. Should we take 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.199 a break? I think so, I think we've reached breakness. 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.080 I know, the nerves that was nervous during that setup. 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:10.880 Were you You thought I was just gonna keep going 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.480 and going. No, No, not that. I was just like, man, 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:17.040 this stuff is so you know, there's there are fine lines, 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.520 and I just don't want to misspeak. Oh I don't 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:21.480 think we did. But now that I just said that, 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.720 of course we did. All right, Well, we'll gather ourselves 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:26.720 and we'll be right back to talk about the history 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:50.839 of hunger strikes a little bit right after this, Okay, Chuck. 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.000 So why would anybody engage in a hunger strike and 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:58.199 why would they be most closely related or thought of, um, 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:03.120 in relation to the I R A. Well, uh, you know, 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.160 there is some evidence that they were rooted in Celtic tradition, UM, 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.880 hundreds of years ago. There were you know, there were 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:14.960 stories of people undergoing hunger strikes and it might you know, 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:17.800 it wasn't necessarily political at the time. So how it 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.200 would go down is like maybe somebody owed you money 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.120 and wouldn't give it to you, so you would go 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:26.120 very publicly to where they live, camp out on their 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:29.200 doorstep and engage in a hunger strike. And it was 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:34.920 sort of just a very public display of you know, 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:37.040 maybe you didn't have means to get it any other way, 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:39.160 so it was a very public display and way of saying, 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.120 this person is doing me wrong and I am out 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:47.200 here like starving myself. Pay attention, right. It was so 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.560 common it was actually written into Gaelic law. I was 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.600 called the troupes cad or trust God, I'm going with 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:59.200 trups cad um, and it was it was the concept 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:02.640 of hospitality in Ireland among the Gaelic people was so 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:08.000 strong that, um, it was just unthinkable to let somebody 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.600 starve on your doorstep. So it was really kind of 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.040 playing on two things. It was drawing attention to somebody, 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.040 and then it was also showing what a terrible person 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:18.560 they were for letting this person starve on their doorstep. 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.520 The thing is this is real, that really happened, Like 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.840 it's it comes up in some of the um epics 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:28.040 from the Gaelic culture, and like it's documented that it 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.480 was a real thing. But what's not documented is it's 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.600 linked to the I r A hunger strikes of the 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:36.800 beginning of the twentieth century and then towards the end 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.160 of the twentieth century. Because nobody involved in those ever 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.880 said I'm I'm doing I'm pulling a trop scad um. 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.160 They didn't link it to it, but you could make 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.480 a case that it was kind of like in the 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.440 culture to think of doing something like that, because it 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.320 had been around for hundreds of years. Yeah, I think 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.040 that's fair to say. And you know, it continued, like 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.200 in the early nineteen hundreds, there were how are you 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:05.600 saying at suffragettes, suffragists, suffrage suffragists. Yeah, like how you 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:10.560 call a female or male server a server, a female 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:13.400 or male actor and actor? We don't do, you know. 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:16.880 I know that David Bowie song always confuses me, though, well, 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.080 it's a good song and it should remain. But they 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:23.320 would undergo hunger strikes, but they would bring in sort 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:28.720 of like religious iconography sometimes and sort of paint themselves 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.280 as martyrs. They would invoke the Virgin Mary and Joan 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.640 of Arc and stuff like that. And again, this is 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:38.080 not exactly the same thing. But this is just to 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:41.640 say that in the early nineteen hundreds there were, uh, 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.680 there were women in Ireland that were undergoing these hunger strikes. 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:47.680 They also happened in Russia, and I think they called 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.560 some of these like the Russian method. Uh. They would 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.800 get there, they would do this reverse like force feeding, 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:59.080 like reverse stomach bumping to force feed some of these people. Um. 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.000 Sometimes that would killed them. So it was it was 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:06.800 just a nasty way to draw attention, and the way 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.439 that it was countered was also nasty. Yeah. So the 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:13.439 first i RA members to hunger strike want to go 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:18.800 on hunger strike, um, were inspired by the suffragists um, 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:21.280 who were sometimes in the same prison as them. The 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.000 first ira A member to do it was James Connolly, 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:27.159 who went on hunger strike in and was actually released 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.960 from prison as a result. UM. And then a few 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:34.520 years later, UM, the case of Thomas Ash drew national 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:37.560 and I think maybe even international attention because he went 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.479 on hunger strike and they accidentally killed him when they 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:44.199 tried to force feed him. Yeah, they pumped milk and 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:50.000 eggs into his lungs by accident, which is uh, I mean, 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:51.439 it's hard to think of like what kind of an 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.720 awful death after you're already starving yourself. Uh. And we 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.200 should also point out to that. Another similarity that they 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:02.679 had with these original early nineteen hundreds suffragists with their 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.200 hunger strikes is they were and this is a very 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:08.600 key thing for what ended up being, you know, the 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:10.639 hunger strikes in the nineteen eighties that we're going to 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.880 talk about in a bit, But they one of their 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.840 main aims was to be looked at as political prisoners 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.879 and not criminal prisoners. Yeah. That was a big ongoing 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:24.159 thread throughout all of this, starting with the suffragists and 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.440 then all the way into the eighties with modern IRA. 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:30.680 So um, I mean, should we talk about that for 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.800 a minute? Yeah, sure, Well, you know, there's a huge 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:39.040 difference in being viewed as a criminal and wearing prisoners 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:43.280 clothing and having a prisoners rights which are to say, 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.080 like criminal prisoners rights which are to say, not very many, 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:49.840 and what they were fighting for and what the the 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:51.840 I r. A Was later fighting for in the eighties 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.960 and the seventies, which was we're political prisoners. We want 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:58.280 to be able, we don't want to look like common criminals. 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.320 We want to wear our own clothes. We want to 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:02.960 be able to uh, to associate with with each other 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:07.280 and walk about, um outside of ourselves and congregate. And 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:09.960 in nineteen seventy six, you know, they allowed this for 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.000 a while, but nineteen seventy six of British government said no, 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:15.800 we're going to treat you like your terrorists and like 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:18.960 your common criminals. And you've got to wear these You 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:21.719 can't congregate anymore. You've got to wear, you know, uh, 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:25.720 a prisoners jumpsuit. And this was a big, big deal. 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.040 It really was for a number of reasons. One UM, 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.280 the reason why the Brits said we're not going to 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:35.240 recognize you as political prisoners was because they had at 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:40.719 first um and they decided that this was generating too 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:45.240 much sympathy and legitimizing the i r A and its 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:50.160 struggle for Irish independence way too much, and by casting 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:55.320 them as criminals rather than political prisoners, they were saying like, hey, 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.960 these people are dangerous, their thugs, they're terrorists, and you 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:00.800 should be on the side of us, the Brits and 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.119 the Protestants who are cleaning up the streets and getting 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.840 these people off the streets and into jail. So it 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:11.600 wasn't just the way your day to day life panned 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.959 out in prison. It was also like the larger public 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.320 perception a battle for that that was going on that 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.719 both sides were really entrenched in their way of thinking 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.399 with that. Well, yeah, and that's the reason a hunger 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:27.440 strike in the case of the IRA was, or could 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:30.399 be at least very effective as a pr tool, because 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:34.800 a common criminal prisoner is it going to literally starve 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:38.720 themselves to death for a cause. So on one hand 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.399 you have the British government saying, you know, we're not 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:43.800 going to recognize you, you're just terrorists. On the other hand, 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.639 you've got the i ra A starving themselves to death, Uh, 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:50.560 fighting for rights to where their own clothing. I think, Uh, 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:52.600 this one thing you sent me said as far as 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.880 their them congregating, is that in prison they just saw 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.280 that as another I ra A headquarters. Basically. Yeah, they 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:02.480 did a lot of strategizing in the early seventies and 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:05.600 they were able to chuck because of something called um 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:09.960 Operation Demetrius, and that was something that the British Army 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.640 carried out in one and it ended up backfiring because 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.479 it generated a tremendous amount of public sympathy for the 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:19.960 i r A and its movement um because the British 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.000 Army just started rounding up suspected members of the i 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:25.720 r A and put them in what amounted to a 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:28.880 prisoner of war camp um. There was no due process, 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:30.520 they didn't get to plead their case in front of 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.199 a judge if they accidentally got scooped up, and they 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:34.840 really had nothing to do with the I RA A 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:37.880 t s. There was no recourse for getting out of there, 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:40.720 and they set up the Brits set up a prisoner 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.760 of war camp um in Northern Ireland to hold I 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:49.440 think hundreds and hundreds of of prisoners starting in UM one, 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:52.640 and it really really rubbed the public the wrong way 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:57.119 because it's nineteen seventy one. You know, this isn't like 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:01.840 the seventeenth century all over again. It's one and they're 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.280 rounding people up and holding them in prisoners of prisoner 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:10.280 of war camps um against Theirwell that's crazy. Yeah. So 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:12.440 you know, a hunger strike could be a pretty effective 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:16.159 way to draw attention to this. Uh you know. Ed 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:19.399 points out a few um things about hunger strikes that 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.280 could make it more effective, which is obviously to do 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:25.840 it as a collective action is a much stronger message 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:29.520 that you're sending than any individual. Um. So if you 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:31.879 have a group with a political cause, you're gonna get 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:36.480 more attention. Um. You know, it casts the prison officials 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:40.119 in a light of which they're either allowing these people 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:42.680 to starve to death, which is, you know, a monstrous 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:45.400 thing to do, or they're forced feeding them, which sometimes 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.080 kills them, which is a monstrous thing to do. And 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:51.880 you know, your body basically shuts down. I think we've 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:55.840 talked about starvation and other episodes before, but you know, 0:22:56.160 --> 0:22:58.920 your body uses up your fat stores and once that's gone, 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:03.280 once that's gone, it starts literally like eating at your muscle, 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:07.960 eating at your internal organs, and between you know, forty 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:11.399 and seventy something days, your your body is going to 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:14.399 finally succumb to organ failure and you're gonna die. Yeah. 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.400 Um yeah, once your once your body starts eating its 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:19.800 own organs, you're in trouble. And even if you managed 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:25.359 to survive the um, the hunger strike, um, you probably 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:30.200 have done some serious permanent damage to yourself. So so, 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:32.879