This month’s episode of the Historical Belfast Podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Northern Ireland War Memorial museum on Talbot Street who have kindly given me access to their oral history archive. I am also extremely grateful for the research and writing of the late historian Jonathan Bardon on this subject and, as such, this episode is dedicated to Dr Bardon.

80 years ago, in the course of 4 Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War, lasting 10 hours in total, 1,100 people died, over 56,000 were homes damaged, and 100,000 people were made homeless.

The first attack on Belfast came on the night of 7th April. The docks area was attacked with great accuracy, though residential housing was hit too. The ‘docks raid’, as it became known, was small in comparison to the Easter Raid which followed on the night of 15th April, and the focus of this episode.

Northern Ireland War Memorial - World War II Museum Belfast (niwarmemorial.org)

Delia Murphy - The Spinning Wheel: (4) Delia Murphy - The Spinning Wheel - YouTube

Blitz sound effects: (4) LONDON BLITZ 1940 - ORIGINAL AUDIO - YouTube

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One Saturday Before the Great War, thirteen players from Glentoran Football Club, industrial workers to a man, each of them living in the cramped housing of Ballymacarrett, became the unlikely heroes of a tale which is scarcely believable.

Those not familiar with the story are to be forgiven for thinking that Sam Robinson, a writer and Glentoran fanatic, has let his imagination run wild during these gruelling months of lock-down, however the reality is quite the opposite. Sam has spent many months trawling through online archives including those of foreign countries, tracking down individuals, and writing an historical account of the underdogs from East Belfast on the European stage. The comedy element of the pub crawls and players going AWOL helps us relate to the players as people that we recognise – they weren’t the professional footballers of today, but normal people like you I – and excited to see the world.

The winning of the cup in Vienna was the high water mark of the story – in many ways, the events surrounding it almost made the cup irrelevant, such were high stakes. The glory of Vienna was followed by a dark twist – heading into the mouth of the First World War the Glentoran party were forced to “run like hell” to escape being caught up in the opening exchanges of the conflict. 

When the war eventually did begin, some of the Glentoran players served in the British Army. Indeed, some of the players who they had faced on the tour served also, but on the opposing side – Hertha Berlin, for example lost 36 men in total during the Great War.

And as if that wasn’t enough, when the Second World War began in 1939, some of the characters in this story became victims of the Holocaust, while one man was executed for an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler. You literally couldn’t make it up…

The Second World War touched Glentoran too of course, the club was virtually destroyed during the Belfast Blitz, including the Oval grounds, the kits, the records, and the trophies all lost except one which sat on the chairman’s mantle piece – the Vienna Cup.

Welcome to Episode 12 of the Historical Belfast Podcast, this episode being dedicated to Sam Robinson’s new book on the Glentoran side that toured Europe in 1914 and brought home a cup won in Vienna. Copies of the book can be obtained by contacting Sam via the ‘One Saturday Before The War’ Facebook page – also, if you’ve any further information to add to the story, particularly on the players, Sam would be delighted to hear from you.

If you’re new to this podcast, please check out the previous 11 episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content, and most importantly, share the episodes on your social media, it really helps people to find it.

After reading the book myself, Sam joined me on Zoom for a chat and I began by asking him how his relationship began with Glentoran Football Club...

(Bless 'em All piano version by Calikokat Piano: (4) Bless ‘Em All – Piano - YouTube)

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When we think of Sir Winston Churchill we might think of cigars, Gallipoli, the Second World War, fighting on the beaches, and accolades such as 'Man of the Century' and the United Kingdom's greatest ever leader. More recently, Churchill's name came to the fore during the Black Lives Matters protests, accused of being a racist, while his statue in London was afforded protection due to concerns that it may be defaced.

What we don't tend to consider when evoking Sir Winston Churchill is a long and complex relationship with Ireland, a relationship that has been described by one historian as being duplicitous.

This episode will not be exploring Churchill's relationship with Ireland, instead it will focus on his infamous and lesser known visit to Belfast in 1912, right at the beginning of the third Home Rule crisis.

Please remember to share the episode on your social media and, if you can, review it on whatever platform you are listening. 

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For Episode 10 of the Historical Belfast Podcast I’ve been chatting to Professor Richard Grayson, head of history at Goldsmiths University London.

Richard Grayson has many publications to his name, too many to list here certainly, but I will mention two in particular: Dublin’s Great Wars  - The First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution, published in 2018 and one that I know listeners of this podcast would enjoy.  And secondly, Belfast Boys – How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War, published in 2009, it is a book that I have leaned heavily on over the years, it’s become almost like a bible in the sense that it’s the one book that I keep going back to in order to find solutions for my own research conundrums and it generally always comes up with the answers.

Belfast Boys fundamentally changed how I approach the writing of history. It led me into a world of history by numbers, an scientific approach to the craft which is underpinned by statistics. However, Richard has cleverly taken that scientific approach and weaved through it the individual and local stories which make it relatable for the reader.

The late Professor Keith Jeffery, my one-time supervisor at Queen’s described Belfast Boys as ‘An extremely important book. This work of humane scholarship deserves to become a classic’. For me, 12 years on from its publication, it is already a classic, and as relevant today as it was when it was first released.

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Tim McGarry has become a familiar face on our tv screens over the last 20 years or more.

He is perhaps best-known for his role as a fictional Sinn Fein spokesman ‘Da’ in the evergreen comedy series ‘Give My Head Peace’.

These days he might best be described as a comedian, actor, broadcaster, and as his Wikipedia page points out, a fan of Cliftonville Football Club…

Having said all that, I haven’t invited Tim onto the Historical Belfast Podcast merely for the sake of it. His work, at times, has strayed into the field of history. More recently, a radio series titled ‘The Long And The Short of It’ has been investigating complex matters of Irish history from different perspectives.

In previous years I’ve seen him do a stand-up show on the events of 1916 as well as a hilarious overview of Irish history called ‘Tim McGarry’s Irish History Lesson’…

And so, when I thought about Tim, and how he engages with history, it intrigued me. At times he uses his comedy to confront contentious issues from our past and he seemingly gets away with it where others might not.

In this episode you’ll hear from someone who is extremely well-read in their history, instilled during his younger years at a Christian Brothers School and then at St Malachy’s College, itself steeped in history. Tim is endlessly witty and open minded about history and identity, but more importantly he’s an all-round good guy. 

Don’t forget to listen to the previous 8 episodes of the Historical Belfast Podcast. You can subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your content and this will ensure that you never miss an episode. But for now, I hope you enjoy Episode 9, I’m calling it 'The Famine’s Not Funny' with Tim McGarry, and I started off by asking him to describe his relationship with history…

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To the sound of church bells at 9am on Sunday morning of 21st November 1920, as the IRA’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ hit squads moved towards their 15 victims, a desperate search for an East Belfast military man was underway in a remote area of County Cork.  This is the story of Captain Joseph Thompson, an Intelligence Officer for the Manchester Regiment, executed by the IRA in Ballincollig, County Cork on 20th November 1920.

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A couple of years back I was asked to lead some historical tours of Campbell College school in Belfast. The school, situated on the Belmont estate near Stormont was primarily a boarding school and a firm favourite of prominent families in Belfast such as Davidson of Sirocco Works, Jaffe of Strandtown, Sharman Neil the jeweller, and also of clergymen who received a discount on their fees. C.S. Lewis who grew up nearby attended the school for a short period. Indeed, the gas lamppost on the school driveway is claimed to have been the inspiration for the one represented in The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe though this has also been disputed. Also worth mentioning is Fred Crawford, the UVF gunrunner in 1914 who was on the school’s board of governors.

Anyhow, while carrying out the research for these tours I came across a lesser-known story of an IRA raid on the armoury of the Campbell College Officer Training Corps on Friday 27th December 1935.

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As we approach the centenary of the covert operation to bring home the body of The Unknown Warrior on behalf of the nation at the end of the First World War, new research has unearthed a fascinating story which suggests that a Belfast man was at the heart of it.

In this episode, Jason Burke chats to Mark Scott who is the author of the soon-to-be published book 'Among The Kings' which tells the story of Ernest Fitzsimmons, who went by the name of 'Fitz', and resided at 172 Roden Street in South Belfast. 'Fitz', by his own account, oversaw the operation to bring home the body of the Unknown Warrior only to be subsequently written out of the story and anonymised himself.   

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On Saturday 14th September 1912, two weeks before Ulster Day and the signing of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, Linfield and Belfast Celtic clashed on and off the field at Celtic Park as the Home Rule crisis gathered momentum.

In this episode, Jason Burke takes a closer look at what happened on that fateful day in Paradise and how it proved to be the beginning of the end for the greatest rivalry in the history of Irish football.

Don't forget to check out Historical Belfast Tours and the Historical Belfast Blog at www.HistoricalBelfast.com 

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Episode 4 is on the forgotten poet and Irish rebel Joseph Campbell who penned the words to the traditional airs My Lagan Love and The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby. Not only that, Campbell was a founding member of the Ulster Literary Theatre (c.1904) and the Irish Volunteers (1913), he took part in the Easter Rising (1916), became a Sinn Fein Councillor in 1921, and was interned by pro-treaty forces during the Irish Civil War in 1922/23.

Podcast theme music via Jason Shaw at www.audionautix.com 
Cover image produced using the A R Hogg Collection: PRONI Ref: LA/7/8/HF/3/9

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