I'm back with a new volume of standalone episodes on the history and politics of Irish republicanism!

In this episode I talk to Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, author of Burn Them Out! a history of the Irish far right, recently

published by Bloomsbury.

Padraig has written several non-fiction books on the Irish revolutionary period, including bestselling The Disappeared, which explores all the forced disappearances arising from political violence in 20th-century Ireland, and Revolution, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Irish Book Awards.

In November 2023, the Dublin riots shocked Ireland and the wider world. They were sparked by a knife attack by an immigrant on three children.

Inflammatory online rumours spread in minutes. Part of the north inner city were wrecked, cars and buses torched, and protestors wreaked havoc on the streets for hours.

Until very recently, Ireland had prided itself on having escaped the wave of far-right, xenophobic populism now rampant throughout Europe. That complacency has been rudely challenged.

In Burn Them Out!, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc explores the long history that has led to this pivotal moment. He uncovers the pervasive anti-Semitism of the Irish political elite in the 1920s and 30s, the energetic efforts of Mosley and other British fascists

to extend their movement to the North of Ireland, the IRA’s alliance with Nazi Germany in the 40s and the many ultra-Catholic, anti-communist Irish movements that were millimetres away from fascism

As is befitting the nature of this podcast we will be discussing the rise of the Irish far right and its history within the context of republican responses to fascism. From the Easter Rising through to the Troubles and the recent, disgraceful, cynical appropration of Irish republican aesthetics by the fascist far right.

In this episode, I speak to Theresa O’Keefe about womens involvement in the Provisional IRA.

Her book ‘Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements’ has been described as the first in-depth exploration of women in the contemporary Irish republican movement and the relationship between revolutionary republican women and the ‘mainstream’ women’s movement.

A groundbreaking work, it is based on a series of interviews conducted with women volunteers in the Provisional IRA and challenges conventional orthodoxies about the development of feminist consciousness within national liberation movements.

Theresa is a lecturer and researcher at University College Cork, where she teaches feminism, sexuality, gender, research methods, conflict, crime, and deviance.

For episode 7 of the podcast I am joined by Siobhra Aiken. Her book Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War deconstructs the concept of the Civil War as "the unspeakable war".

She outlines the ways in which a raft of Civil War veterans set out to depict their experiences. While considered by the chattering classes to be low brow pulp at best or subliterature at worst, they read now as a secret history of the post-Civil War period and the efforts republican combatants made to write against the compromises of the Free State.

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In this episode I’m delighted to welcome John Crawley to the show. John was born in Long Island, New York, in 1957, the son of a Co. Roscommon father and a Co. Kerry mother. Two years later the family moved to Chicago and, in 1972, John moved to the town of Castlerea, Co Roscommon, to live with an aunt. It was During this time he decided to become an active member of the republican movement and resolved to return to the US and join the Marine Corps in order to attain as high a level of military expertise as possible, with express intention of putting those skills to use for the republican cause during the Troubles by joining the Provisional IRA.

His recently published memoir is titled The Yank: The True Story Of A Former US Marine in the Irish Republican Army and it is available from Penguin RandomHouse. It charts his extraordinary lifestory from his entry into the elite recon unit of the US Marines to his activity as a Provisional IRA volunteer operating around the border region, his interactions with key figures in the movement including Jim Lynagh and Martin McGuinness, his analysis of the Provisionals as a military and organisational force, his gradual disillusionment with the political strategy of the republican leadership, the gun running operation he was involved in back in the US which included a supporting cast of Boston underworld criminals, his arrest after an arms shipment was intercepted and much more.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711889/the-yank-by-john-crawley/

I was joined by Séamus Kearney to discuss his recently released memoir "No Greater Love” (https://www.anceathrupoili.com/en/shop/no-greater-love-the-memoirs-of-seamus-kearney/). The book details Séamus' involvement in the republican movement, from his entry into the youth wing of the Provisional IRA in Belfast at just 15 years of age through to his incarceration in 1977, whereupon he joined fellow republican prisoners on the blanket protest in the notoroius H Blocks.

A witness to the 1980 and 1981 Hunger Strikes, Seamus details his comradeship and interactions with key figures in the H Block struggle and analyses the consequences and impact of those seismic events on the republican movement as it stands today.

No Greater Love can also be purchased both locally and internationally, from Little Acorn Bookstore, Foyle Street, Derry.

https://littleacornsbookstore.co.uk/

For the fourth episode of the show I welcome Brian Hanley to the podcast.

We discuss the '1969/'19 70 split in the Irish republican movement and the subsequent trajectory of the Provisionals and Officials up until 1972: the deadliest year of the Troubles that saw the Officials eventual ceasefire and the Provisionals famously declaring it the “Year of Victory”.

Brian is Assistant Professor of Twentieth Century Irish Hstory at Trinity College Dublin. He focuses on Irish republicanism and political radicalism, particularly the politics and activity of the Irish Republican Army.

His current research examines the global impact of the Irish Revolution (1916-23), building on work he has  done on Irish republicanism among the diaspora, particularly in Irish America.

His most recent book is The impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968-79: boiling volcano? (Manchester University Press, 2018). Other books include A Documentary History of the IRA, 1916-2005, A Guide to Irish Military Heritage, The IRA, 1926-1936 and - most relevant to our discussion today: The Lost Revolution: the story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party (with Scott Millar).

Brian regularly appears on podcasts such as The Irish History Show and History Ireland.

He is also a contributor to History Ireland magazine, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Guardian.

Episode 2 of The Echo Of The Thunder is out tomorrow morning in celebration of #InternationalWomensDay

I spoke to historian, writer and researcher Liz Gillis about the vitally important contributions of women to the republican movement, from Fenianism to the Civil War.

Liz is one of the leading historians of womens organisations during the Irish revolutionary period and the author of several books including Women Of The Irish Revolution.

For the first episode of The Echo of the Thunder podcast I was delighted to speak with Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh.

Fearghal is a historian of the Irish revolutionary period and author of the consistently blistering BLOSC blog, a home for his writing on history and politics.

His explicitly Marxist, anti-imperialist analysis is always worth reading and in this episode we covered the fundamental philosophical tenets of Irish republicanism, the socialist republican tradition, the South as a counter revolutionary state and his experiences growing up in County Tyrone during The Troubles.