S2 Episode 11 Irish Politics And The Civil War

The Irish Passport

Society & Culture

4.8 • 673 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2018

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ireland’s main political parties are not split on a traditional left-right model, but instead represent different sides of a bloody civil war in the 1920s. But why is this war spoken about so little today? Could it be that its memory is too painful? Or is it because it still so strangely dominant in modern Irish politics? In this episode, Tim traces the history of Ireland’s Civil War from 1922-23, and how it shaped the country’s political landscape. Meanwhile, Naomi pays a visits the Irish Senate in Dublin, where she meets two politicians who have been deeply influenced by Civil War politics, albeit in very different ways. One is Senator Mark Daly, a descendant from anti-treaty rebels still questing for a 32-county Ireland, and the other is Senator Ian Marshall, the first northern unionist ever to be elected to the Irish Seanad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
0:02.4	Let's do it.
0:03.1	Welcome to the Irish Passport.
0:04.9	I'm Tim McInerney.
0:06.0	I'm Naomi O'Leary.
0:07.0	We're friends.
0:07.7	Can you both, Naomi?
0:08.6	Anwar Fat, Tim.
0:10.0	This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics.
0:13.3	Uh-huh.
0:13.5	I'm recording.
0:14.3	One, two, two, three.
0:16.6	Okay.
0:37.7	Hello everybody and welcome back to the Irish Passport podcast.
0:43.5	Yes, hello. And so, Naomi, today we are going to be looking at a war, a war that had a seismic effect on Irish politics, but which people have for a very long time preferred not to speak about.
0:49.1	We're talking, of course, about the Irish Civil War from 1922 to 1923.
0:54.7	In this episode, we'll be looking at that immensely dark period of Ireland's history
0:58.7	and how it ended up shaping the somewhat unusual political system we have in Ireland today.
1:03.4	For example, if you've ever wondered why Irish politics has traditionally been dominated by these two
1:07.8	rather similar sounding, rather similar acting parties,
1:15.7	Finnegale and Fina Ful. That's because they originally represented the two opposing sides of that civil war. Today, we'll hear from some top historians on the Civil War,
1:19.8	who will explain exactly why Ireland descended into a dirty and bloody conflict, just as it
	...

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