The Good Friday Agreement
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 913 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1998, the political parties in Northern Ireland reached a peace agreement that ended decades of war. We hear from Paul Murphy, the junior minister for Northern Ireland at the time. Plus, a cross-community choir in Bosnia and women pioneers from the worlds of finance and oceanography.
PHOTO: Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (L) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (R) pose with the mediator
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, |
| 0:05.2 | the past brought to life by those who were there. This week the religious leader who used music |
| 0:10.8 | to heal the wounds of war in Bosnia. |
| 0:13.0 | It is very difficult when you meet someone feeling deep pain. |
| 0:17.0 | You don't know what say to these people, but we can sing. |
| 0:21.0 | Music then is better language. |
| 0:24.0 | Also we've got the first female stockbroker on the London Stock Exchange |
| 0:28.0 | who brought a new attitude to a very old way of doing things. |
| 0:31.0 | There were a lot of long lunches going on and quite a lot of drinking and they didn't |
| 0:37.1 | know how it would work having women. |
| 0:39.8 | Plus we'll visit a peace community in the Middle East where Jews and |
| 0:43.1 | Palestinians first came together in the 1970s and we have the story of the great |
| 0:47.6 | American oceanographer Marie Tharp who helped to lay the foundations for our |
| 0:51.8 | understanding of plate tectonics. |
| 0:54.0 | Marie Tharp was a red head, a flaming red hair, with a broad smile, |
| 0:58.6 | and was dedicated to revealing to the world 70% of our planet that had been hidden. That's all to come. |
| 1:05.6 | But we begin on this Easter weekend with what turned out to be a bold and so far |
| 1:10.7 | lasting initiative to bring peace to Northern Ireland. |
| 1:14.0 | This came after years of what were euphemistically called the Troubles |
| 1:18.0 | in which mainly Catholic nationalists fought against mainly Protestant Unionists |
| 1:22.0 | to try to end British rule over the north of the island of Ireland. |
| 1:26.0 | More than 3,500 people were killed, 50,000 injured. |
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