Show Notes
On this episode of the Irish History Show we looked at the Birmingham Pub Bombings of the 21st of November 1974 and the long campaign for justice for the six men who were wrongfully convicted of these killings.
To discuss the Birmingham Six we were joined by two special guests. Chris Mullin is an author, journalist and diarist and, from 1987 to 2010, he was the Labour Party MP for Sunderland South in England. His work with Granada Television’s World in Action current affairs series, and his 1986 book, Error of Judgement: The Truth behind the Birmingham Pub Bombings, were integral in proving the innocence of the Birmingham Six. Error of Judgement was described by the author and journalist Sebastian Faulks as ‘One of the greatest feats in investigative journalism.’ A new edition of Error of Judgement has been published this year to mark 50 years since the bombings.
Dr. Michael Flavin is from the School of Global Studies in King’s College, London. Michael’s novels include The Voice Hearer and One Small Step. He has written many articles on the Troubles and a lot of his writing draws on his experience growing up in the Irish community in Birmingham in the 1970s. Michael’s latest novel is Long is the Way and is due to be published next year.
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Intro / Outro music “Sliabh” from Aislinn. Licensed under creative commons from the free music archive.
More from The Irish History Show
On this episode of the Irish History Show we have part three of our series on the Fenians. By the late 1890s, the Irish Republican Brotherhood was led by an older, cautious Supreme Council that prioritised self-preservation over direct military action. They officially banned individual assassinations and spent much of this period maintaining a low-profile underground network to survive British intelligence surveillance.
On this episode of the Irish History Show we were joined by Dr. Eoin O’Malley to discuss his new book, Charlie vs. Garret – The rivalry that shaped modern Ireland. In the 1980s, Irish politics was dominated by Charlie Haughey’s Fianna Fáil and Garret Fitzgerald’s Fine Gael.
On this episode of the Irish History Show we returned to the subject of the Fenians. We traced the movement from the end of the 1867 Rebellion onwards. We covered such subjects as the Amnesty Campaign, the Catalpa rescue, the New Departure, splits in the American movement, the Land War and the growth of cultural nationalism in the 1880s and 1890s.
On this episode of the Irish History Show we discussed the Fenians. The Fenians were Irish republican revolutionaries that sought to achieve the independence of Ireland from the British Empire in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The main Fenian organisations were the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood. In 1867, they attempted a rising in Ireland which was co-ordinated with raids into Canada from the United States. Although the rising failed, the IRB continued in existence and played a central part in the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence which led to the establishment of the Irish Free State.
On this episode of the Irish History Show we discussed the Penal Laws in Ireland. The Penal Laws were a series of legal disabilities imposed in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on the kingdom’s Roman Catholic majority and, to a lesser degree, on Protestant “Dissenters”. Enacted by the Irish Parliament, they secured the Protestant Ascendancy by further concentrating property and public office in the hands of those who, as communicants of the established Church of Ireland, subscribed to the Oath of Supremacy.