The Economic War

The Irish Passport

Society & Culture

4.8 • 652 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Naomi and Tim dig into the history of Ireland's Economic War, a challenging period for the early Irish state which ended up transforming the country as it shaped its new independence. We hear from someone who lived through that difficult period of the 1930s, when Britain slapped high tariffs on Ireland and the Irish state retaliated in turn. "The English were starving the Irish people that time," were his stark words. Naomi unpicks how her own family story intersects with Ireland's revolutionary history of land ownership, through the tale of the O'Leary family on the Kerry townland of Readrinagh. Naomi and Tim discuss more of the research behind this episode and reveal more secrets from the archives in a bonus debrief now available for supporters over on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/posts/halfpint-debrief-144460322

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
0:02.3	Let's do it.
0:03.1	Welcome to the Irish Passport.
0:04.8	I'm Tim McInerney.
0:06.0	I'm Naomi O'Leary.
0:07.0	We're friends.
0:07.7	Can you both to Naomi?
0:08.5	Anoir fat, Tim.
0:09.9	This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics.
0:13.2	Uh-huh.
0:13.4	I'm recording.
0:14.2	One, two, two, three.
0:16.6	Okay. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Irish Passport podcast. Today we're going to be discussing a chapter of history that in some ways has echoes in the present. A time of economic nationalism when Irish exports were being hit by crippling tariffs.
0:53.6	We are talking about a really interesting point in Irish history,
0:57.0	and that is the Anglo-Irish trade war of 1932 to 1938.
1:01.7	This was a time of huge upheaval,
1:03.4	which culminated in becoming a really important step
1:06.2	in Ireland establishing its independence from Britain, actually.
1:09.6	The kind of fun headline we could give here is this was a time of Trumpian tariffs long
1:14.6	before Trump. So Britain imposed massive tariffs on Irish imports and Ireland retaliated with
1:21.0	its own measures, which is how you get the name, the economic war.
1:25.0	It's something as well that has a lot of resonances with the present day,
	...

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