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Revisionist History Presents: The Limits of Power · Revisionist History

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Speaker 1: Bushkin. Hello there, Malcolm Glawell. Here. Many people have spoken
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Speaker 1: up over the last few days, very eloquently about the
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Speaker 1: tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of a
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Speaker 1: police officer in Minneapolis. It says something about the country
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Speaker 1: we live in that the most powerful things I've heard
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Speaker 1: have come from mayors and preachers and rappers and talk
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Speaker 1: show hosts and countless ordinary people on Twitter, while the
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Speaker 1: White House turned off its lights and the President hid
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Speaker 1: in an underground bunker. Sometimes words fail me. As those
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Speaker 1: of you who have followed my career now, I've been
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Speaker 1: writing and thinking about race and policing for a very
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Speaker 1: long time. The final chapter of my second book, Blink,
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Speaker 1: was about the forty one shots fired at a young
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Speaker 1: African immigrant named Amadu Diallo by New York City police
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Speaker 1: officers in nineteen ninety nine as he stood on his
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Speaker 1: front porch and reach for his wallet to show them
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Speaker 1: his ID. My latest book, Talking to Strangers, starts and
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Speaker 1: ends with the tragic encounter between a young African American woman,
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Speaker 1: Sandra Bland, and a highway patrolman on the streets of
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Speaker 1: Prairie View, Texas. So I wanted to add my voice
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Speaker 1: to the chorus and share some of that work. And
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Speaker 1: what I decided on is a portion of the audiobook
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Speaker 1: version of my book David and Goliath. It was published
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Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, and this chapter is about a riot
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Speaker 1: that took place in Belfast, in Northern Ireland. It's about
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Speaker 1: a situation from miles away and many years ago, and
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Speaker 1: about the divisions of religion and class, and not the
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Speaker 1: divisions of race. But sometimes I think it's useful to
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Speaker 1: take a step back and consider policing in a broader context.
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Speaker 1: What happened in Northern Ireland fifty years ago and what
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Speaker 1: is happening now on the streets of the United States
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Speaker 1: are not all that different. The core question in both
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Speaker 1: is if you have power, what does it mean to
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Speaker 1: use it wisely? And what are the consequences if you don't.
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Speaker 1: So here we go from David and Glyithe Chapter seven
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Speaker 1: Rosemary Lawler. When the troubles began in Northern Ireland. Rosemary
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Speaker 1: Lawler was a newlywed. She and her husband had just
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Speaker 1: bought a house in Belfast. They had a baby. It
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Speaker 1: was a summer of nineteen sixty nine and Catholics and Protestants,
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Speaker 1: the two religious communities that have lived uneasily alongside each
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Speaker 1: other throughout the country's history, were at each other's throat.
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Speaker 1: There were bombings and riots. Gangs of Protestant militants loyalists
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Speaker 1: as they were called, roamed the streets, burning down houses.
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Speaker 1: The Lawlers were Catholic, and Catholics have always been a
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Speaker 1: minority in Northern Ireland. Every day they grew more frightened.
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Speaker 1: I'd come home at night, Lawler said, and they would
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Speaker 1: be riding on the door tags out. Tags is a
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Speaker 1: derogatory word for an Irish Catholic, or no pope here.
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Speaker 1: Another night we were there. We were very lucky. A
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Speaker 1: bomb came into the back yard and didn't explode. One
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Speaker 1: day I went to knock on my neighbor's door and
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Speaker 1: I realized she was gone. I found out that day
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Speaker 1: that a lot of people had gone. So when my husband,
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Speaker 1: Terry came home from work, I said, Terry, what's going
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Speaker 1: on here? And he said, we're in danger. We left
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Speaker 1: the home that night. We had no phone. You remember
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Speaker 1: this is in the days before mobiles. We walked out.
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Speaker 1: The fear was in me. I put my son in
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Speaker 1: his pram. I guided up best we could. Pieces of
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Speaker 1: clothes for him and ourselves. There was a tray at
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Speaker 1: the bottom of the pram and we stuffed them all
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Speaker 1: on the tray and Terry says to me, right, Rosy,
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Speaker 1: we're going to walk straight out of here. I'm a
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Speaker 1: going to smile at everybody. I was trembling. I was
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Speaker 1: a teenage mom, a teenage girl who got married, nineteen married,
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Speaker 1: new baby, new world, new life taken away from me
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Speaker 1: like that, do you know? And I have no power
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Speaker 1: to stop it. Fear is an awful thing, and I
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Speaker 1: remember being really, really scared aired. The safest place they
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Speaker 1: knew was the all Catholic neighborhood of Ballymurphy in West Belfast,
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Speaker 1: where Lawler's parents lived. But they had no car, and
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Speaker 1: with Belfast and turmoil, no taxi wanted to venture into
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Speaker 1: a Catholic neighborhood. Finally, they tricked the cab into stopping
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Speaker 1: by saying their baby was sick and needed to get
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Speaker 1: to a hospital. They shut the car door and Terry
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Speaker 1: told the driver, I want you to take us to Ballymurphy.
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Speaker 1: The driver said, oh, no, I'm not doing that. But
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Speaker 1: Terry had a poker and he took it out and
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Speaker 1: he placed the point against the back of the driver's
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Speaker 1: neck and said, you're going to take us. The cab
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Speaker 1: driver drove them to the edge of Ballymurphy and stopped.
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Speaker 1: I don't care if you stick that in me. He said,
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Speaker 1: I'm not going any further. The Lawlers gathered up their
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Speaker 1: baby and their worldly possessions and ran for their lives.
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Speaker 1: At the beginning of nineteen seventy, things got worse. That Easter,
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Speaker 1: there was a ride in Ballymurphy. The British the Army
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Speaker 1: was called in. A fleet of armored cars with barbed
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Speaker 1: wire on their bumpers patrolled the streets. Lawla would push
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Speaker 1: her pram past soldiers with automatic rifles and tear gas grenades.
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Speaker 1: One weekend in June, there was a gun battle in
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Speaker 1: the bordering neighborhood. A group of Catholic gunmen stepped into
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Speaker 1: the middle of the road and opened fire on a
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Speaker 1: group of Protestant bystanders. In response, Protestant loyalists tried to
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Speaker 1: burn down a Catholic church near the docks. For five hours,
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Speaker 1: the two sides fought locked in deadly gun battle. Hundreds
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Speaker 1: of fires burned across the city. By the end of
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Speaker 1: the weekend, six people were dead and more than two
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Speaker 1: hundred injured. The British Home Secretary responsible for Northern Ireland
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Speaker 1: flew up from London, surveyed the chaos and ran back
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Speaker 1: to his plane. For God's sake, bring me a large scotch,
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Speaker 1: he said, burying his head in his hands. What a
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Speaker 1: bloody awful country. A week later a woman came through Ballymurphy.
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Speaker 1: Her name was Harriet Carson. She was famous for hitting
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Speaker 1: Maggie Thatcher over the head with a handbag at city Hall.
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Speaker 1: Lawler said, I knew her growing up. Harriet was coming
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Speaker 1: around with two lids of pots and she was banging
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Speaker 1: them together and she was shouting, come on, come out,
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Speaker 1: come out. The people in the Lower Falls were getting murdered.
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Speaker 1: She was shouting it up and I went out to
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Speaker 1: the door. My family was all there, and she was shouting.
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Speaker 1: They're locked in their houses. Their children can't get milk,
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Speaker 1: and they haven't got anything for a cup of tea,
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Speaker 1: and there's no bread, and come out, come out. We
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Speaker 1: need to do something. The Lower Falls is an all
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Speaker 1: Catholic neighborhood just down the hill from Bala Murphy. Lawler
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Speaker 1: had gone to school in the Lower Falls. Her uncle
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Speaker 1: lived there as did countless cousins. She knew as many
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Speaker 1: people in the Lower Falls as she did in Bala Murphy.
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Speaker 1: The British Army had put the entire neighborhood under curfew
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Speaker 1: while they searched for illegal weapons. I didn't know what
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Speaker 1: curfew meant, Lawler said, hadn't a clue. I had to
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Speaker 1: say to somebody, what does that mean? She said, they're
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Speaker 1: not allowed out of their houses? I said, how can
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Speaker 1: they do that? I was totally stunned. Stunned, what do
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Speaker 1: you mean the people are locked in their houses, they
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Speaker 1: can't get out for bread or milk? While the Brits,
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Speaker 1: the British Army were kicking indoors and racking and ruining
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Speaker 1: and searching. I was what the biggest thought in everybody's
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Speaker 1: mind was, there are people locked in their houses and
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Speaker 1: there's children. You have to remember some houses had twelve
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Speaker 1: fifteen kids in them. Do you know? That's the way
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Speaker 1: it was? What do you mean they can't get out
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Speaker 1: of their houses? They were angry. Rose May Lawler is
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Speaker 1: now in her sixties, a sturdily built woman with ruddy
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Speaker 1: cheeks and short, white blonde hair swept to the side.
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Speaker 1: She was a seamstress, by trade, and she was dressed
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Speaker 1: with flair, a bright floral blouse and white crop pants.
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Speaker 1: She was talking about things that had happened half a
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Speaker 1: lifetime ago, but she remembered every moment. My father said,
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Speaker 1: the Brits they'll turn on us. They'll say therein here
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Speaker 1: to protect us. They'll turn on us. You wait and see.
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Speaker 1: And he was one hundred percent right. They turned on us,
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Speaker 1: and the curfew was the start of it. The same
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Speaker 1: year that Northern Ireland descended into chaos, two economists, Nathan
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Speaker 1: Ladies and Charles Wolfe Junior wrote a report about how
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Speaker 1: to deal with insurgencies. Ladies and wolf worked for the
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Speaker 1: Rand Corporation, the prestigious think tanks started after the Second
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Speaker 1: World War by the Pentagon. Their report was called Rebellion
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Speaker 1: and Authority. In those years when the world was exploding
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Speaker 1: in violence, everyone read Ladies and wolf. Rebellion and Authority
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Speaker 1: became the blueprint for the war in Vietnam, and for
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Speaker 1: how police departments dealt with civil unrest, and for how
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Speaker 1: governments cope with terrorism. Its conclusion was simple. Fundamental to
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Speaker 1: our analysis is the assumption that the population, as individuals
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Speaker 1: or groups behaves rationally, that caluculates costs and benefits to
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Speaker 1: the extent that they can be related to different courses
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Speaker 1: of action, and makes choices accordingly. Consequently, influencing popular behavior
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Speaker 1: requires neither sympathy nor mysticism, but rather a better understanding
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Speaker 1: of what costs and benefits the individual or the group
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Speaker 1: is concerned with and how they are calculated. In other words,
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Speaker 1: getting insurgents to behave is fundamentally a math problem. If
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Speaker 1: there are riots in the streets of Belfast, it's because
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Speaker 1: the costs to rioters of burning houses and smashing windows
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Speaker 1: are high enough. And when Ladies and Wolf said that
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Speaker 1: influencing popular behavior requires neither sympathy nor mysticism, what they
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Speaker 1: meant was that nothing mattered but that calculation. If you
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Speaker 1: were in a position of power, you didn't have to
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Speaker 1: worry about how lawbreakers felt about what you were doing.
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Speaker 1: You just had to be tough enough to make them
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Speaker 1: think twice. The general in charge of the British forces
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Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland was a man straight out of the
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Speaker 1: pages of rebellion and authority. His name was Ian Freeland.
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Speaker 1: He had served with distinction in Normandy during the Second
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Speaker 1: World War and later fought insurgencies in Cyprus and Zanzibar.
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Speaker 1: He was trim and forthright, with a straight back and
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Speaker 1: a square jaw and a firm hand. He conveyed the
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Speaker 1: correct impression of a man who knew what needed to
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Speaker 1: be done and would do it. When he arrived in
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Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, he made it plain that his patience was limited.
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Speaker 1: He was not afraid to use force. He had his
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Speaker 1: orders from the Prime Minister. The British Army should deal
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Speaker 1: toughly and be seen to deal toughly with thugs and gunmen.
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Speaker 1: On June thirtieth, nineteen seventy, the British Army received a
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Speaker 1: tip there were explosives and weapons hidden in a house
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Speaker 1: at twenty four Balkan Street in the Lower Falls. They
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Speaker 1: were told Freeland in nemediately dispatched five armored cars filled
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Speaker 1: with soldiers and police officers. A search of the house
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Speaker 1: turned up a cache of guns and ammunition. Outside, a
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Speaker 1: crowd gathered. Someone started throwing stones. Stones turned into petrol bombs.
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Speaker 1: A riot started. By ten pm. The British had had enough.
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Speaker 1: An Army helicopter armed with a loud speaker circled the
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Speaker 1: Lower Falls, demanding that all residents stay inside their homes
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Speaker 1: or face arrest. As the streets cleared, the army launched
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Speaker 1: a massive house to house search. Disobedience was met with
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Speaker 1: firm and immediate punishment. The next morning, a triumphant Freeland
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Speaker 1: took two Protestant government officials and a pack of journalists
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Speaker 1: on a two of the neighborhood in the back of
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Speaker 1: an open flatbed truck, surveying the deserted streets, like, as
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Speaker 1: one soldier later put it, the British raj on a
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Speaker 1: tiger hunt. The British Army went to Northern Ireland with
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Speaker 1: the best of intentions. The local police force was overwhelmed,
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Speaker 1: and they were there simply to help to serve as
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Speaker 1: a peacekeeper between Northern Ireland's two warring populations. This was
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Speaker 1: not some distant and foreign land. They were dealing with
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Speaker 1: their own country, their own language, and their own culture.
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Speaker 1: They had resources and weapons and soldiers and experience that
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Speaker 1: dwarf those of the insurgent elements they were trying to contain.
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Speaker 1: When Freeland toured the empty streets of the Lower Falls
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Speaker 1: that morning, he believed that he and his men would
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Speaker 1: be back home in England by the end of the summer.
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Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. Instead, what should have been
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Speaker 1: a difficult few months turned into thirty years of bloodshed
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Speaker 1: and mayhem in Northern Ireland. The British made a simple mistake.
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Speaker 1: They fell into the trap of believing that because they
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Speaker 1: had resources, weapons, soldiers and experience that dwarfed those of
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Speaker 1: the insurgent elements they were trying to contain, it did
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Speaker 1: not matter what the people of Northern Ireland thought of them.
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Speaker 1: General Freeland believed Ladies and Wolf when they said that
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Speaker 1: influencing popular behavior requires neither sympathy nor mysticism, and Ladies
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Speaker 1: and Wolf were wrong. It has been said that most
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Speaker 1: revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place,
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Speaker 1: but by the stupidity and brutality of governments. Sean macstephen,
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Speaker 1: the provisional i RAS for his chief of staff, once said,
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Speaker 1: looking back on those early years, well you had that
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Speaker 1: to start with in Northern Ireland, all right. The simplest
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Speaker 1: way to understand the British mistake in Northern Ireland is
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Speaker 1: to picture a classroom. It's a kindergarten class, a room
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Speaker 1: with brightly colored walls covered in children's drawings. Let's call
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Speaker 1: the teacher Stella. The classroom was videotaped as part of
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Speaker 1: a project at the Curry School of Education at the
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Speaker 1: University of Virginia, and there is more than enough footage
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Speaker 1: to provide a good sense of the kind of teacher
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Speaker 1: Stella is and the kind of classroom she has. Even
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Speaker 1: after a few minutes, it is abundantly clear that things
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Speaker 1: aren't going well. Stella is sitting in a chair at
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Speaker 1: the front of the room. She's reading out loud from
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Speaker 1: a book that she's holding up to one side. Seven
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Speaker 1: slices of tomatoes, eight juicy olives, nine chunks of cheese.
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Speaker 1: A girl is standing in front of her, reading along
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Speaker 1: and all around her, the class is in chaos, a
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Speaker 1: mini version of Belfast in the summer of nineteen seventy.
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Speaker 1: A little girl is doing cartwheels across the room. A
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Speaker 1: little boy is making faces. Much of the class seems
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Speaker 1: to be paying no attention at all. Some of the
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Speaker 1: students have actually turned themselves entirely around so that they
14:55
Speaker 1: have their backs to Stella. If you were to walk
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Speaker 1: in on Stella's class, what would you think. I'm guessing
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Speaker 1: your first reaction would be that she has a group
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Speaker 1: of unruly children. Maybe she teaches in a school in
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Speaker 1: a poor neighborhood, and her students come from troubled families.
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Speaker 1: Maybe her students come to school without any real respect
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Speaker 1: for authority or learning. Ladies and Wolf would say that
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Speaker 1: she really needs to use some discipline. Children like that
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Speaker 1: need a firm hand, they need rules. If there is
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Speaker 1: no order in the classroom, how can any learning take place.
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Speaker 1: The truth is, though, that Stella's school isn't in some
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Speaker 1: terrible neighborhood. Her students aren't particularly or unusually unruly. When
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Speaker 1: the class begins, they are perfectly well behaved and attentive,
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Speaker 1: eager and ready to learn. They don't seem like bad
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Speaker 1: apples at all. They only start to misbehave well into
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Speaker 1: the lesson, and only in response to the way Stella
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Speaker 1: is behaving. Stella causes the crisis, how so, by doing
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Speaker 1: an appalling job of teaching a lesson. Stella had the
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Speaker 1: girl from the class reading alongside her as a way
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Speaker 1: of engaging the rest of the students, But the pacing
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Speaker 1: of the back and forth between the two of them
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Speaker 1: was excruciatingly slow and wooden look at her body language.
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Speaker 1: One of the Virginia researchers, bridget Hamry, said as we
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Speaker 1: watched Stella right now, she's just talking to this one kid,
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Speaker 1: and no one else is getting in. Her colleague Robert
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Speaker 1: Pianta added, there's no rhythm, no pace, This is going nowhere.
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Speaker 1: There's no value in what she's doing. Only then did
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Speaker 1: the class begin to deteriorate. The little boys started making faces.
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Speaker 1: When the child started doing cartwheels. Stella missed it entirely.
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Speaker 1: Three or four students to the immediate right of the
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Speaker 1: teacher were still gamely trying to follow along, but Stella
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Speaker 1: was so locked onto the book that she wasn't giving
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Speaker 1: them any encouragement. Meanwhile, to Stella's left, five or six
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Speaker 1: children had turned themselves around, but that was because they
16:56
Speaker 1: were bewildered, not because they were disobedient. Their view of
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Speaker 1: the book was completely blocked by the little girl standing
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Speaker 1: in front of Stella. They had no way of following along.
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Speaker 1: We often think of authority as a response disobedience. A
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Speaker 1: child acts up, so a teacher cracks down. Stella's classroom, however,
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Speaker 1: suggests something quite different. Disobedience can also be a response
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Speaker 1: to authority. If the teacher doesn't do her job properly,
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Speaker 1: then the child will become disobedient. With classrooms like this one,
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Speaker 1: people will call what is happening a behavioral issue. Henry said.
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Speaker 1: We were watching one of Stella's kids wiggling and squirming
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Speaker 1: and contorting her face and altogether doing whatever she could
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Speaker 1: to avoid her teacher. But one of the things we
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Speaker 1: find is that this sort of thing is more often
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Speaker 1: an engagement problem than a behavioral problem. If a teacher
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Speaker 1: is actually doing something interesting, these kids are quite capable
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Speaker 1: of being engaged. Instead of responding in a let me
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Speaker 1: control your behavior way, the teacher needs to think, how
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Speaker 1: can I do something interesting that will prevent you from
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Speaker 1: misbehaving in the first place. The next video and Hamry
18:09
Speaker 1: played was of a third grade teacher giving homework to
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Speaker 1: her students. Each student was given a copy of the assignment,
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Speaker 1: and the teacher in the class read the instructions aloud together.
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Speaker 1: Pianta was aghast. Just the idea that you would be
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Speaker 1: choral reading a set of instructions to a bunch of
18:27
Speaker 1: eight year olds is almost disrespectful, he said, I mean,
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Speaker 1: why is there any instructional purpose they know how to read.
18:36
Speaker 1: It's like a waiter in a restaurant giving the menu
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Speaker 1: and then proceeding to read every item to you just
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Speaker 1: as it appears on the page. A boy sitting next
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Speaker 1: to the teacher raises his hand midway through the reading,
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Speaker 1: and without looking at him, the teacher reaches out, grabs
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Speaker 1: his wrists and pushes his hand down. Another child starts
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Speaker 1: to actually do the assignment, an entirely logical action given
18:59
Speaker 1: the pointlessness of what the teacher is doing. The teacher
19:03
Speaker 1: addresses him sharply, sweety, this is homework. It was a
19:08
Speaker 1: moment of dissipate. The child had broken the rules. The
19:11
Speaker 1: teacher had responded firmly and immediately. If you were to
19:15
Speaker 1: watch that moment with the sound turned off, you would
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Speaker 1: think of it as Ladies and Wolf perfectly applied. But
19:21
Speaker 1: if you were to listen to what the teacher was
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Speaker 1: saying and think about the incident from the child's perspective,
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Speaker 1: it would become clear that it is having anything but
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Speaker 1: its intended effect. The little boy isn't going to come
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Speaker 1: away with a renewed appreciation of the importance of following
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Speaker 1: the rules. He's going to come away angry and disillusioned.
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Speaker 1: Why because the punishment is completely arbitrary. He can't speak
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Speaker 1: up and give his own side of the story, and
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Speaker 1: he wants to learn. If that little boy became defiant,
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Speaker 1: it was because his teacher made him that way, just
19:56
Speaker 1: as Stella turned an eager and attentive student into someone
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Speaker 1: who did cartwheels across the floor. When people in authority
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Speaker 1: want the rest of us to behave it matters first
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Speaker 1: and foremost how they This is called the principle of legitimacy.
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Speaker 1: And legitimacy is based on three things. First of all,
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Speaker 1: the people who are asked to obey authority have to
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Speaker 1: feel like they have a voice, that if they speak up,
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Speaker 1: they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable.
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Speaker 1: There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules
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Speaker 1: tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the
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Speaker 1: rules today. And Third, the authority has to be fair.
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Speaker 1: It can't treat one group differently from another. All good
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Speaker 1: parents understand these three principles implicitly. If you want to
20:46
Speaker 1: stop little Johnny from hitting his sister, you can't look
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Speaker 1: away one time and scream at him another. You can't
20:52
Speaker 1: treat his sister differently when she hits him. And if
20:55
Speaker 1: he says he really didn't hit his sister, you have
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Speaker 1: to give him a chance to explain himself. How you
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Speaker 1: punish is as important as the act of punishing itself.
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Speaker 1: Nor is the story of Stella all that surprising anyone.
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Speaker 1: He was ever set in a classroom knows that it
21:11
Speaker 1: is important for teachers to earn the respect of their students.
21:16
Speaker 1: What is harder to understand, however, is the importance of
21:19
Speaker 1: these same principles when it comes to law and order.
21:22
Speaker 1: We know our parents and our teachers, so it makes
21:24
Speaker 1: sense that legitimacy should matter a lot inside the home
21:28
Speaker 1: or the school. But the decision about whether to rob
21:31
Speaker 1: a bank or shoot someone seems like it belongs to
21:34
Speaker 1: a very different category, doesn't it. That's what Ladies and
21:37
Speaker 1: Wolf meant when they said that fighting criminals and insurgents
21:41
Speaker 1: requires neither sympathy nor mysticism. They were saying that at
21:46
Speaker 1: that level, the decision to obey the law is a
21:48
Speaker 1: function of a rational calculation of risks and benefits. It
21:53
Speaker 1: isn't personal. But that's precisely where they went wrong, because
21:57
Speaker 1: getting criminals and insurgents to behave turns out to be
22:01
Speaker 1: as dependent on legitimacy as getting children to behave in
22:05
Speaker 1: the classroom. When Ladies and Wolf wrote that in fluencing
22:09
Speaker 1: popular behavior requires neither sympathy nor mysticism. They meant that
22:14
Speaker 1: the power of the state was without limits. If you
22:17
Speaker 1: wanted to impose order, you didn't have to worry about
22:20
Speaker 1: what those whom you were ordering about thought of you.
22:23
Speaker 1: You were above that. But Ladies and Wolf had it backwards.
22:28
Speaker 1: That was the mistake General Freeland made in the Lower Falls.
22:32
Speaker 1: He didn't look at what was happening through the eyes
22:33
Speaker 1: of people like Rosemary Lawler. He thought he'd ended the
22:37
Speaker 1: insurgency when he rode around the hush streets of the
22:40
Speaker 1: Lower Falls like a British raj on a tiger hunt.
22:44
Speaker 1: Had he bothered to drive up the street to Ballymurphy,
22:47
Speaker 1: where Harriet Carson was banging the lids of pots and saying,
22:51
Speaker 1: come on, come out, come out. The people in the
22:53
Speaker 1: Lower Falls are getting murdered, he would have realized the
22:57
Speaker 1: insurgency was just beginning. July in Northern Ireland is the
23:02
Speaker 1: height of what is known as Marching season, when the
23:05
Speaker 1: country's Protestant loyalists organized parades to commemorate their long ago
23:10
Speaker 1: victories over the country's Catholic minority. There are church parades,
23:16
Speaker 1: arch banner and hall parades, commemorative band parades, and Blood
23:21
Speaker 1: and Thunder and Kick the Pope flute band parades. There
23:25
Speaker 1: are parades with full silver bands, parades with bagpipes, parades
23:30
Speaker 1: with accordions, and parades with marchers wearing sashes and dark
23:33
Speaker 1: suits and bowler hats. There are hundreds of parades in all,
23:38
Speaker 1: involving tens of thousands of people, culminating every year in
23:42
Speaker 1: a massive march on the twelfth of July that marks
23:45
Speaker 1: the anniversary of the victory by William of Orange in
23:49
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Boyne in sixteen ninety, when Protestant
23:53
Speaker 1: control over northern Ireland was established once and for all.
23:58
Speaker 1: The night before the twelfth, as it is known, marchers
24:02
Speaker 1: around the country hold street parties and build enormous bonfires.
24:06
Speaker 1: When the fire is at its height, the group chooses
24:09
Speaker 1: a symbol to burn. In past years it has often
24:12
Speaker 1: been an effigy of the Pope or some hated local
24:15
Speaker 1: Catholic official. Here's how one old twelve ditty goes, sung
24:20
Speaker 1: to the tune of Clementine. Build a bonfire, Build a
24:24
Speaker 1: bonfire stick a Catholic on the top, Put the Pope
24:28
Speaker 1: right in the middle, and burn the fucking lot. Northern
24:32
Speaker 1: Island is not a large country. Its cities are dense
24:35
Speaker 1: and compact, and as the loyalists march by each summer
24:39
Speaker 1: in their bowler hats and sashes with flutes, they inevitably
24:43
Speaker 1: pass by the neighborhoods of the people whose defeat they
24:45
Speaker 1: are celebrating. The central artery of Catholic West Belfast is
24:50
Speaker 1: in places no more than a few minutes walk from
24:53
Speaker 1: the street that runs through the heart of Protestant West Belfast.
24:57
Speaker 1: There are places in Belfast where the houses of Catholics
25:00
Speaker 1: back directly onto the backyards of Protestants, in such close
25:04
Speaker 1: proximity that each house has a giant metal great over
25:08
Speaker 1: its backd yard to protect the inhabitants against debris or
25:12
Speaker 1: petrol bombs thrown by their neighbors. On the night before
25:16
Speaker 1: the twelfth, when Loyalists lit bonfires around the city, people
25:20
Speaker 1: in Catholic neighborhoods would smell the smoke and hear the
25:24
Speaker 1: chance and see their flag going up in flames. In
25:28
Speaker 1: marching season, violence always erupts in Northern Ireland. One of
25:33
Speaker 1: the instants that began the troubles was in nineteen sixty nine,
25:37
Speaker 1: after two days of riots broke out when a parade
25:40
Speaker 1: passed through a Catholic neighborhood. When the marchers went home,
25:43
Speaker 1: they went on a rampage to the streets of West Belfast,
25:47
Speaker 1: burning down scores of homes. The gun battles the following
25:51
Speaker 1: summer that so tried Freeland's patience also happened during Protestant marches.
25:57
Speaker 1: Imagine that every summer usr veterans from the Northern States
26:01
Speaker 1: paraded through the streets of Atlanta and Richmond to commemorate
26:04
Speaker 1: their long ago victory in the American Civil War. In
26:08
Speaker 1: the dark years of Northern Ireland, when Catholic and Protestant
26:12
Speaker 1: were at each other's throat, that's what marching season felt like.
26:17
Speaker 1: When the residents of the Lower Falls looked up that
26:20
Speaker 1: afternoon and saw the British Army descend on their neighborhood,
26:24
Speaker 1: then they were as desperate as anyone to see law
26:27
Speaker 1: and oder enforced in Belfast, but they were equally anxious
26:31
Speaker 1: about how law and oder would be enforced. Their world
26:35
Speaker 1: did not seem fair. The twelfth, when either their flag
26:39
Speaker 1: or their pope would be burned in giant bonfires, was
26:43
Speaker 1: only days away. The institution charged with keeping both sides
26:47
Speaker 1: apart during marching season was the police force, the Royal
26:51
Speaker 1: Ulster Constabulary, but the RUC was almost entirely Protestant. It
26:57
Speaker 1: belonged to the other side. The RUC had done almost
27:00
Speaker 1: nothing to try and stop the riots the previous summer.
27:04
Speaker 1: A tribunal convened by the British government concluded, after the
27:07
Speaker 1: Protestant loyalists had torched houses, that the RUC officers had
27:12
Speaker 1: failed to take effective action. Journalists at the scene reported
27:17
Speaker 1: loyalists going up to police officers and asking them if
27:21
Speaker 1: they could borrow their weapons. One of the reasons the
27:24
Speaker 1: British Army had been brought into Northern Island was to
27:27
Speaker 1: serve as an impartial referee between Protestant and Catholic but
27:32
Speaker 1: England was an overwhelmingly Protestant country, so it seemed only
27:37
Speaker 1: natural to Northern Ireland's beleaguered Catholics that the sympathies of
27:41
Speaker 1: the soldiers would ultimately lie with the Protestants. When a
27:45
Speaker 1: big loyalist march had run through Ballymurphy in the easter
27:49
Speaker 1: before the Lower Falls curfew, British soldiers had stood between
27:53
Speaker 1: the marchers and the residents, ostensibly to act as a buffer.
27:57
Speaker 1: But the troops faced the Catholics on a sidewalk and
28:00
Speaker 1: stood with their backs to the loyalists, as if they
28:03
Speaker 1: saw their job as to protect the Loyalists from the Catholics,
28:06
Speaker 1: but not the Catholics from the loyalists. General Freeland was
28:10
Speaker 1: trying to enforce the law in Belfast, but he needed
28:14
Speaker 1: to first ask himself if he had the legitimacy to
28:17
Speaker 1: enforce the law, and the truth is he didn't. He
28:21
Speaker 1: was in charge of an institution that the Catholics of
28:24
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland believed, with good reason, was thoroughly sympathetic to
28:29
Speaker 1: the very people who had burned down the houses of
28:31
Speaker 1: their friends and relatives the previous summer. And when the
28:35
Speaker 1: law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does
28:38
Speaker 1: not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.
28:45
Speaker 1: The great puzzle of Northern Island is why it took
28:48
Speaker 1: the British so long to understand this. In nineteen sixty nine,
28:53
Speaker 1: the troubles resulted in thirteen deaths, seventy three shootings and
28:57
Speaker 1: eight bombings. In nineteen seventy, Freeland decided to get tough
29:02
Speaker 1: with thugs and gunmen, warning that any one caught throwing
29:05
Speaker 1: gasoline bombs was liable to be shot. What happened, The
29:10
Speaker 1: historian Desmond Hamil rights. The IRA retaliated by saying that
29:15
Speaker 1: they would shoot soldiers if irishmen were shot. The Protestant
29:20
Speaker 1: Ulster Volunteer Force, an extreme and illegal paramilitary unit, quickly
29:24
Speaker 1: joined in, offering to shoot a Catholic in return for
29:27
Speaker 1: every soldier shot by the IRA. The Times quoted a
29:31
Speaker 1: Belfast citizen saying, anyone who isn't confused here doesn't really
29:36
Speaker 1: understand what is going on. That year there were twenty
29:41
Speaker 1: five deaths, two hundred and thirteen shootings and one hundred
29:44
Speaker 1: and fifty five bombings. The British stood firm They cracked
29:49
Speaker 1: down even harder, and in nineteen seventy one there were
29:52
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty four deaths, one thousand and twenty
29:56
Speaker 1: bombings and one thousand, seven hundred and fifty six shootings.
30:01
Speaker 1: Then the British drew a line in the sand. The
30:04
Speaker 1: army instituted a policy known as internment. Civil rights in
30:09
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland were suspended. The country was flooded with troops
30:13
Speaker 1: and the Army declared that anyone suspected of terrorist activities
30:17
Speaker 1: would be arrested and held in prison indefinitely without charges
30:22
Speaker 1: or trial. So many young Catholic men were rounded up
30:26
Speaker 1: during internment that in a neighborhood like Ballymurphy, everyone had
30:29
Speaker 1: a brother, or a father or a cousin in prison.
30:33
Speaker 1: If that many people in your life have served time
30:36
Speaker 1: behind bars, does the law seem fair anymore? Does it
30:40
Speaker 1: seem predictable? Does it seem like you can speak up
30:43
Speaker 1: and be heard? Things got even worse. In nineteen seventy two.
30:48
Speaker 1: There were one thousand, four hundred and ninety five shootings,
30:52
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty one armed robberies, one thousand, nine
30:56
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one bombings, and four hundred and ninety
30:59
Speaker 1: seven people killed. One of those four hundred and ninety
31:03
Speaker 1: seven was a seventeen year old boy named Amen. Aimon
31:08
Speaker 1: was Rosemary Lawler's little brother. Amon appeared at my door.
31:13
Speaker 1: Lawler said. He said to me, I'd love to stay
31:16
Speaker 1: here for a day or two, and I said, why
31:19
Speaker 1: don't you? He said, Ma would have a fit, she
31:22
Speaker 1: would go ballistic. Then he confided in myself and my
31:26
Speaker 1: husband that he was getting harassed by the British Army.
31:29
Speaker 1: Every time he was out, every corner he turned, everywhere
31:33
Speaker 1: he went, they were stopping him and they threatened him.
31:37
Speaker 1: Was he actually working with the IRA. She didn't know,
31:41
Speaker 1: and she said it didn't matter. We were all suspects
31:44
Speaker 1: in their eyes. She went on, that's the way it was.
31:47
Speaker 1: And Amon was shot shot by a British soldier. Him
31:52
Speaker 1: and another fellow were having a smoke and one shot
31:55
Speaker 1: rang out and Amon got it. He lived for eleven weeks.
31:59
Speaker 1: He died on the sixteenth of January, at seventeen and
32:02
Speaker 1: a half years of age. She began to tear up.
32:06
Speaker 1: My father never worked again at the dock. My mother
32:09
Speaker 1: was destroyed, heart broken. It's forty years ago this year,
32:14
Speaker 1: it's still rough. Lalla was a young wife and mother
32:18
Speaker 1: living what she had expected would be a normal life
32:21
Speaker 1: in modern Belfast. But then she lost her home. She
32:25
Speaker 1: was threatened and harassed. Her relatives down the hill were
32:28
Speaker 1: imprisoned in their homes. Her brother was shot and killed.
32:33
Speaker 1: She never wanted any of it, nor asked for any
32:35
Speaker 1: of it, nor could even make sense of what happened.
32:39
Speaker 1: That was my life, my whole new life, she said.
32:42
Speaker 1: And then this was forced upon me, and I go.
32:46
Speaker 1: This is not right. Do you know? Here are my
32:49
Speaker 1: people I grew up with in school being burnt out
32:51
Speaker 1: of their houses. The British Army that came in to
32:55
Speaker 1: protect us has now turned on us and is racking
32:58
Speaker 1: and ruining. I became hooked. I don't mean that flippantly.
33:03
Speaker 1: I became that way because I can't sit in the
33:05
Speaker 1: house while this is going on. I can't be an
33:09
Speaker 1: nine to five mother. People call it the troubles, she continued.
33:14
Speaker 1: It was war. The British Army was out there with
33:17
Speaker 1: armored cars and weapons and you name it. That's a
33:20
Speaker 1: war zone we lived in. The British Army came in
33:23
Speaker 1: here with every means that they had available to put
33:26
Speaker 1: us down, and we were like rubber dolls. We'd just
33:29
Speaker 1: bounced back up again. Don't get me wrong, we got
33:32
Speaker 1: hurt on the way down. A lot of people had heartache.
33:35
Speaker 1: I suffered from anger for a long long time, and
33:38
Speaker 1: I've apologized to my children for that. But the circumstances
33:42
Speaker 1: dictated that it wasn't how I was. I wasn't born
33:47
Speaker 1: that way. This was forced upon me when General Freeland's
33:52
Speaker 1: men descended on the Lower Falls. The first thing the
33:55
Speaker 1: neighbors did was to run to Saint Peter's Cathedral, the
33:58
Speaker 1: local Catholic church, just a few blocks away. The defining
34:02
Speaker 1: feature of the Lower Falls, like so many of the
34:05
Speaker 1: other Catholic neighborhoods of West Belfast, was its religiousosity. Saint
34:10
Speaker 1: Peter's was the heart of the neighborhood. Four hundred people
34:14
Speaker 1: would attend mass at Saint Peter's on a typical weekday.
34:18
Speaker 1: The most important man in the community was the local priest.
34:23
Speaker 1: He came running. He went up to the soldiers. The
34:26
Speaker 1: raid must be done quickly, he warned them, or they
34:29
Speaker 1: would be trouble. Forty five minutes passed and the soldiers
34:33
Speaker 1: emerged with their hall fifteen pistols, a rifle, a Schmeiser's
34:38
Speaker 1: submachine gun, and a cache of explosives and ammunition. The
34:42
Speaker 1: patrol packed up and left, turning onto a side street
34:46
Speaker 1: that would take them out of the Lower Falls. In
34:49
Speaker 1: the interim, however, a small crowded gathered, and as the
34:52
Speaker 1: armored cars turned the corner, a number of young men
34:55
Speaker 1: ran forward and started throwing stones at the soldiers. The
34:59
Speaker 1: patrol stopped, the crowd grew angry. The soldiers responded with teargas.
35:05
Speaker 1: The crowd grew angrier. Stones turned to petrol b and
35:09
Speaker 1: petrol bombs to bullets. A taxi driver said he had
35:13
Speaker 1: seen someone carrying a submachine gun heading for Balkon Street.
35:17
Speaker 1: The riders set up roadblocks to slow the army's advance.
35:21
Speaker 1: A truck was set ablaze one block away, blocking the
35:24
Speaker 1: end of the street. The soldiers fired even more tear
35:28
Speaker 1: gas until the wind had carried it clear across the
35:31
Speaker 1: lower Falls. The crowd grew angrier. Still, why did the
35:36
Speaker 1: patrol stop? Why didn't they just keep going? Lingering in
35:41
Speaker 1: the neighborhood is exactly what the priest told them not
35:43
Speaker 1: to do. The priests went back to the soldiers and
35:47
Speaker 1: pleaded with them again. If they stopped the tear gas,
35:50
Speaker 1: he said he would get the crowd to stop throwing stones.
35:54
Speaker 1: The soldiers didn't listen. Their instructions were to get tough
35:58
Speaker 1: and be seen, to get tough with thugs and gunmen.
36:02
Speaker 1: The priest turned back towards the crowd. As he did,
36:05
Speaker 1: the soldiers fired off another round of tear gas. The
36:08
Speaker 1: canisters felt the feet of the priest, and he staggered
36:11
Speaker 1: across the street, leaning on a window sill. As he
36:14
Speaker 1: gasped for air. In a neighborhood so devout that four
36:18
Speaker 1: hundred people would show Upromasse on a typical weekday, the
36:22
Speaker 1: British Army gas the priest. That was when the riots started.
36:27
Speaker 1: Freeland called in reinforcements to subdue a community of eight
36:31
Speaker 1: thousand people packed into tiny houses along narrow streets. The
36:35
Speaker 1: British brought in three thousand troops, and not just any
36:39
Speaker 1: troops to a fiercely Catholic neighborhood. Freeland brought in soldiers
36:44
Speaker 1: from the Royal Scots, one of the most obviously and
36:47
Speaker 1: self consciously Protestant regiments in the entire army. Army helicopters
36:53
Speaker 1: circled overhead, ordering the residents by megaphone to stay inside
36:57
Speaker 1: their homes. Roadblocks were placed at every exit, a curfew
37:01
Speaker 1: was declared and a systematic house by house search began.
37:05
Speaker 1: Twenty and twenty one year old soldiers, still small charting
37:09
Speaker 1: from the indignity of being pelted with stones and petrol bombs,
37:13
Speaker 1: forced their way into home after home, punching holes in
37:17
Speaker 1: walls and ceilings, ran sacking bedrooms. Listen to one of
37:21
Speaker 1: those British soldiers looking back on what happened that night.
37:26
Speaker 1: A guy still in his pajamas came out cursing, wielding
37:29
Speaker 1: a lamp and waxed stan across the head stand, dodged
37:33
Speaker 1: the next one, and decked the bloke with his rifle butt.
37:36
Speaker 1: I knew full well that a lot of the lads
37:38
Speaker 1: were taking this opportunity to vent their anger over things
37:41
Speaker 1: already done. Heads were being cracked and houses trashed from
37:45
Speaker 1: top to bottom. Everything in the houses became a mass
37:49
Speaker 1: of rubble. But out of the blur, little sharp details
37:53
Speaker 1: still cut through. School photos, smiley family pictures, cracked trinkets
38:00
Speaker 1: and crucifixes, stamped kids crying, crunching on the glass of
38:05
Speaker 1: the Pope's picture, unfinished meals and bad wallpapers, colored toys
38:10
Speaker 1: and TV noise and radio crackle, painted plates, shoes, a
38:15
Speaker 1: body in the hall flattened against the wall. This is
38:19
Speaker 1: when I did feel like we'd invaded. Three hundred and
38:23
Speaker 1: thirty seven people were arrested that night. Sixty were injured.
38:28
Speaker 1: Charles O'Neill, a disabled Air Force veteran, was run over
38:32
Speaker 1: and killed by a British armored car. As his body
38:36
Speaker 1: lay on the ground, one of the soldiers poked a
38:38
Speaker 1: bystander with a baton and said move on, you Irish bastard.
38:43
Speaker 1: There are not enough of you dead. A man named
38:46
Speaker 1: Thomas Burns was shot by a soldier on the Falls
38:48
Speaker 1: Road at eight p m. As he stood with a
38:51
Speaker 1: friend who was boarding up the windows of his store.
38:54
Speaker 1: When his sister came to pick up his body, she
38:56
Speaker 1: was told he had no business being on the street
38:59
Speaker 1: at that time. At eleven p m, an elderly man
39:03
Speaker 1: named Patrick Ellman, thinking the worst was over, went out
39:07
Speaker 1: in his bedroom slippers and shirts leaves for a pre
39:10
Speaker 1: bedtime stroll. He died in a burst of army gunfire.
39:15
Speaker 1: One of the neighborhood accounts of the curfew says of
39:18
Speaker 1: Ellmann's death that very night British troops actually entered and
39:23
Speaker 1: courted themselves in the shopman's home, the distraught sister having
39:28
Speaker 1: been moved to the other brothers up the street. This
39:31
Speaker 1: tasteless intrusion into the abandoned home was discovered the next
39:35
Speaker 1: afternoon during the interval in the curfew, when the brother
39:39
Speaker 1: with his daughter and son in law went down to
39:41
Speaker 1: the house and found the door broken down, a window broken,
39:45
Speaker 1: kit lying on the floor, shaving tackle on the settee
39:49
Speaker 1: and used cups in a scullery. Neighbors informed them that
39:53
Speaker 1: the soldiers had dost down in the upstairs rooms as well,
39:58
Speaker 1: a door broken down, a window broken, dirty dishes left
40:03
Speaker 1: in the sink. Ladies and Wolf believed that all the
40:06
Speaker 1: counts are rules and rational princes, but what actually matters
40:11
Speaker 1: are the hundreds of small things at the powerful do
40:15
Speaker 1: or don't do to establish their legitimacy, like sleeping in
40:19
Speaker 1: the bed of an innocent man you'd just shot accidentally
40:22
Speaker 1: and scattering your belongings around his house. By Sunday morning,
40:27
Speaker 1: the situation inside the Lower Falls was growing desperate. The
40:31
Speaker 1: Lower Falls was not a wealthy neighborhood. Many of the
40:34
Speaker 1: adults were unemployed, or if they were not, relied on piecework.
40:39
Speaker 1: The streets were crowded, and the homes were narrow, cheaply
40:42
Speaker 1: built nineteenth century terraced red brick row houses with one
40:46
Speaker 1: room to a floor and bathrooms in the backyard. Very
40:51
Speaker 1: few houses had a refrigerator. They were dark and damp.
40:55
Speaker 1: People bought bread daily because it grew moldy otherwise, but
40:59
Speaker 1: the curfew was now thirty six hours old and there
41:02
Speaker 1: was no bread left. The Catholic neighborhoods of West Belfast
41:06
Speaker 1: are packed so tightly together and linked by so many
41:09
Speaker 1: ties of marriage and blood, that words spread quickly from
41:13
Speaker 1: one to the next about the plight of the lower falls.
41:16
Speaker 1: Harriet Carson walked through Bala Murphy, banging together the lids
41:21
Speaker 1: of pots. Next came a woman named Mary Drum. She
41:24
Speaker 1: had a bullhorn. She began walking through the streets shouting
41:28
Speaker 1: out to the women, come out, fill your prams with
41:32
Speaker 1: bread and milk. The children haven't gotten any food. The
41:36
Speaker 1: women started to gather in groups of two and four,
41:38
Speaker 1: and ten and twenty, until they numbered in the thousands.
41:42
Speaker 1: Some people still had their rollers in their hair and
41:45
Speaker 1: their scarves over their head. Lalla remembers. We linked arms
41:49
Speaker 1: and sang we shall overcome, We shall overcome. Some day
41:54
Speaker 1: we got down to the bottom of the hill, she
41:56
Speaker 1: went on. The atmosphere was electric. The Brits were standing
42:01
Speaker 1: with their helmets and their guns already their batons were out.
42:05
Speaker 1: We turned and went down the Grosvenor Road, singing and shouting.
42:09
Speaker 1: I think the Brits were in awe. They couldn't believe
42:12
Speaker 1: that these women with prams were coming down to take
42:14
Speaker 1: them on. I remember seeing one brit standing there scratching
42:17
Speaker 1: his head, going, what do we do with all these women?
42:21
Speaker 1: Do we go into a riot situation here? Then we
42:24
Speaker 1: turned onto Slate Street where the school was my school,
42:28
Speaker 1: and the Brits were there. They come flying out of
42:30
Speaker 1: the school and there was hand to hand fighting. We
42:33
Speaker 1: got the hair pulled out of us. The Brits just
42:36
Speaker 1: grabbed us, threw us up against the walls. Oh aye,
42:39
Speaker 1: they beat us and if you fell you had to
42:41
Speaker 1: get up very quickly because you didn't want to get trampled.
42:44
Speaker 1: They came out with brutality. I remember standing up on
42:48
Speaker 1: top of a car and having a look at what
42:50
Speaker 1: was going on in the front. Then I saw a
42:52
Speaker 1: man with shaving cream on his face and putting his
42:55
Speaker 1: braces on, and all of a sudden, the soldiers stopped
42:58
Speaker 1: beating us. The man putting his braces on was the
43:02
Speaker 1: commanding officer of the Slate Street checkpoint. He might have
43:06
Speaker 1: been the only voice of sanity on the British side
43:08
Speaker 1: that day, the only one who understood the full dimensions
43:12
Speaker 1: of the catastrophe unfolding. A heavily armed group of soldiers
43:17
Speaker 1: was beating up a group of pram pushing women coming
43:21
Speaker 1: to feed the children of the lower falls. He told
43:24
Speaker 1: his men to stop. You have to understand the march
43:28
Speaker 1: was still coming down the road, and the people the
43:30
Speaker 1: back hadn't a clue what was going on at the front.
43:33
Speaker 1: Laura went on. They kept coming, women were crying. People
43:37
Speaker 1: started coming out of their houses, pulling people in because
43:41
Speaker 1: there were so many injured. Once all the people started
43:43
Speaker 1: coming out of their houses, the Brits lost control. Everyone
43:47
Speaker 1: came out on the streets, hundreds and hundreds of people.
43:50
Speaker 1: It was like a domino effect. One street that'd come out.
43:54
Speaker 1: Next thing you know, doors are opening on another street,
43:57
Speaker 1: another street, and another street. The Brits gave up. They
44:00
Speaker 1: had their hands up. The women forced, and we forced,
44:03
Speaker 1: and we forced until we got in, and we got
44:06
Speaker 1: in and we broke the curfew. I've often thought about it. God,
44:09
Speaker 1: it was like everybody was jubilant. It was like we
44:13
Speaker 1: did it. I remember coming home and suddenly felt very
44:17
Speaker 1: shaky and upset and nervous about the whole episode. Do
44:20
Speaker 1: you know. I remember speaking to my father about it afterward.
44:24
Speaker 1: I said, Daddy, your words came true. They turned on us,
44:29
Speaker 1: and he said, true British army. That's what they do.
44:34
Speaker 1: He was right. They turned on us, and that was
44:38
Speaker 1: the start of it.