The Irish Passport

This year, a whistleblower revealed a shocking secret. A popular British holiday camp business kept a ‘blacklist’ of Irish surnames, distributed to staff to bar customers from booking. In this episode, Naomi and Tim dig into the incident to explore how a policy meant to exclude Travellers inadvertently swept up a large part of the …

Continue reading "Traveller exclusion: revealing an open secret"

Anarchist clubs, public assassinations, and secret rebel meetings in a notorious vegetarian restaurant – all these feature in this fascinating episode on the historical links between Ireland and India at the beginning of the 20th century. UCD’s Conor Mulvagh explains why Ireland and India were so symbolically important to the survival of the British Empire, …

Continue reading "Ireland and India: Assassins of Empire"

Chaos hits the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s largest pro-British bloc, as new leader Edwin Poots is deposed in a revolt just 20 days after taking up the position. Naomi and Tim hear why the woman he usurped Arlene Foster is laughing, the Irish language dispute at the centre of Poots’ downfall, and what it …

Continue reading "Halfpints: Drama in the DUP"

The Irish Passport brings you an interview with Jer O’Leary: actor, activist, artist, orator of Jim Larkin speeches and Dublin legend who recorded these tapes before he died in 2018. Jer discusses growing up in the Irish capital and how it changed over his life, and how he ended up in the national art college …

Continue reading "Jer O’Leary: a Dublin life"

A profound industrial dispute rocked Dublin in 1913, playing into a rising tide of nationalism and shaping the unique political landscape of Ireland of the following century. In this episode, Naomi and Tim tell the story of the 1913 Dublin Lockout led by firebrand trade unionist James Larkin. We hear from Jer O’Leary, an artist …

Continue reading "The Irish left: legacies of the Lockout"

Does the recent unrest in Northern Ireland betray a growing disconnect between the DUP, loyalist paramilitaries, and the communities they claim to represent? How have the protests been influenced by the international scrutiny of police oppression in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement? And why are class politics more central than ever to …

Continue reading "Halfpints: What’s really going on in Northern Ireland?"

Harps, shamrocks, hands, crowns, swords, mythical female embodiments of Éire: all Irish symbols and all up for discussion in this episode, in which Tim and Naomi are joined by Darach Ó Séaghdha of the Motherfoclóir podcast to discuss Irish flags past, present, and future. We consider the merits and perils of the different symbols as …

Continue reading "Halfpints: Flags of Ireland"

The real history of the Irish pub, the backstory to the leprechaun, and what St Patrick’s Day has meant throughout the generations: Naomi and Tim sum it up in this St. Patrick’s Day special in honour of the national day. If you are celebrating the holiday around the world, we have a special message for …

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Surprise! While we continue to prepare Season 5, we’ve decided to make last month’s Halfpint episode freely available to all our listeners. In this edition, Tim builds on our recent Season 4 finale by delving deeper into the colonial Irish Parliament around the time of the Act of Union of 1801. If you haven’t heard …

Continue reading "Halfpints: Grattan and His Parliament"

New survey data suggests majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland want referendums on whether to break with the union, and a majority across the United Kingdom expect Scotland to be independent within 10 years. With the bonds of the union under strain, Naomi and Tim sum up how the Brexit negotiations concluded, and explore the …

Continue reading "Destructive Unionism: Part 2, The Current Day"