Northern Ireland 1969: Battle lines
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2019
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ruth Sanderson grew up in Northern Ireland, yet never really understood how the Troubles started. Although the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement effectively brought peace in 1998, Ruth believes the fallout from the violence continues to cast a long shadow over a society which is still divided. Now Ruth returns to the same courtroom in Belfast where the Scarman Tribunal sat, and begins to piece together the events of August 1969, when Northern Ireland spiralled out of control.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a story about fear. |
| 0:04.0 | Stay in your homes and keep your families in your home. |
| 0:09.0 | It's about what happens when distrust and division tip a society into chaos. |
| 0:15.0 | There is something radically wrong with the state of Northern Ireland. |
| 0:20.0 | For God's sake, keep this community safe. |
| 0:24.0 | Across a single week in August 1969 a darkness would be unleashed in Northern Ireland that |
| 0:36.2 | were still trying to make sense of. |
| 0:38.2 | I believe that the IRA have masterminded this whole operation? |
| 0:44.8 | I've asked the Prime Minister on behalf of the people here |
| 0:48.2 | to send in troops today. 69 was like the courtyard of the bottle and it |
| 0:58.0 | 69 was like the courtyard of the bottle |
| 1:00.0 | and it released all that pent up tensions and fears and vindictiveness and what's going out of the bottle has never been put back. |
| 1:10.0 | This is my dad. While my family and I would never describe ourselves as victims of the conflict here, |
| 1:17.0 | its legacy has impacted on our lives in all sorts of subtle ways. |
| 1:22.0 | When my boys went to university, they didn't stay here. |
| 1:28.0 | They went to Scotland. |
| 1:30.0 | They went to Scotland and I have nine grandchildren, but they never came home again. |
| 1:35.2 | Well that's really sad, Sir Welling, of it, it's really sad for you. |
| 1:38.8 | It is really sad. |
| 1:40.8 | And now, I'm expecting really sorry. And it's hard then to think. How do I begin to explain |
| 1:50.1 | the weird legacy of here and, you know, the weird history of here and you know the weird history of here because I don't |
| 1:55.7 | think it's resolved and I don't think it's going to be resolved anytime soon. |
... |
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