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This is what I'm here for This is the goal of my video all of that Let's get into it man copyright disclaimer under section 107 of the copyright act 1976 Allowance is made for fair use purposes such as criticism comment news reporting teaching scholarship and research Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing Non-profit educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use No copyright infringement intended all rights belong to their respective owners Talk to me. Let's get into it press play London England Friday the 10th of April 1992 9 25 p.m. A White Ford Transit van sits idle in the heart of the city of London's financial district Parked directly in front of Britain's leading shipping institution the Baltic exchange It's eerily quiet Somewhere in a dingy office at London's Waterloo station a phone rings Clutching at the receiver an operator answers the call hello a man at the other end mutters a warning 20 minutes the van in front of the stock exchange followed by a series of code words 2.2 kilometers northeast on 125 old Broad Street The stock exchange tower lists over a road and its parking spaces All of which are empty The warning had identified the wrong building Suddenly just down the road at the Baltic exchange a white van erupts in a violent explosion Arcing into the evening sky Corraled by the surrounding high-rises Smoke and flame skip across glass and marble with nowhere to go but upwards This was 1970 Within seconds the entire area is left utterly unrecognizable The blast had raked the facades from most of the surrounding buildings and destroyed every pane of glass in the vicinity The people unlucky enough to be nearby Didn't fare much better either a 15 year old girl sitting in her father's car a short way down the street from the van Was killed instantly and her eight-year-old sister was left with hundreds of lacerations via a whirlwind of glass shards another victim 49-year-old Tom Casey was stationed as the Baltic exchange's doorman and was filling in for a colleague while the final casualty RIP 100% but imagine it Somebody called off work asked you to switch with them and 29-year-old stock broker by the name of pull but happened to be walking by the building when the bomb went off When the dust settled three people had been killed a further 91 injured and around 350 million pounds and damages Have been caused to the surrounding buildings. It was a devastating attack According to contemporary reports. It was the most powerful bomb detonated in London since the Second World War But who were the culprits? Some months prior to the bombing in a shed in the County of South Armagh in Northern Ireland a group of men makes sugar with a Monion nitrate fertilizer Their work illuminated by a flickering fluorescent light blinking at them almost impatiently These are members of the provisional Irish Republican Army or the Pirae and they are building a bomb Grinding away at the mixture it eventually becomes a fine highly explosive powder which they dry and transfer into plastic bags Once complete they heave their product into a trailer which is quickly towed away by a complicit tractor Over the next few days these bags are ferried to the outskirts of London where another group of Pirae members wait to help them fulfill their purpose They pack the bags of ammonium and sugar together Binding the crude mixture with a seven-text detonation cord attached to a US made Iroco detonator the entire bundle weighs roughly 45 kilograms Finally a wad of cash changes hands a van is purchased and a driver sets a course for central London To conduct the largest bombing of mainland Britain since the Blitz This attack although one of the most devastating was over and this is the largest since the Blitz The blitz was correct. I just learned about the blitz see I be one see y'all be thinking I'll be paying attention, but like that's that's insane at that it this even pales like This even runs a comparison only one of hundreds that the IRA and its spin-off groups carried out in London between 1973 and 2001 But why did these attacks occur and what socio-political impact did they have on Britain to find out? We need to look at Northern Ireland and how it came to exist Like a little history lesson As you might imagine integrating a sponsorship into a video about the IRA We've reacted to this channel before I remember him What we're not going to do Salute man. That's his code for luck in for the uninitiated Northern Ireland is not part of Ireland It's currently part of the United Kingdom Its existence is the main cause of antagonism between the Pira Who were militant Irish republicans who sought a united island and great Britain Who sought to maintain the status quo and retain Northern Ireland as one of the four nations of the United Kingdom After a bloody war of independence between 1919 and 1921 Northern Ireland elected to unlike the rest of the island not seek independence from the UK And instead remain within it This created an ethnic political and economic riptide that would form the backdrop of a decades-long terror campaign That would ultimately aim at resting Northern Ireland from what they saw as an unlawful British occupation The roots of this conflict however are deep and lie many hundreds of years in the past By the mid 16th century the kingdom of England had established a colony on the eastern coast of Ireland In an area known as the pale However, their grip over the rest of the island which had been in large part conquered by their Anglo-Norman ancestors Had since slipped drastically in order to re-establish their authority The English monarchy decided to create so-called plantations all over Ireland The largest of which were Munster in the south and Ulster in the north settled in 1585 and 1609 respectively These plantations, which were basically fortified townships established on lands confiscated from rebelling Irish lords would attract English and Scottish Protestant settlers loyal to Britain They were by admission of the scheme's proponents explicitly colonial apparatuses that were meant to quote civilize the local Catholic population and convert them to Protestantism In the hope that they would become more amenable to British rule The Munster plantation would falter primarily because the Protestant settlers in the region were isolated and outnumbered by the predominantly Catholic native Irish population In contrast the Ulster plantation in the north would thrive benefiting from the wholesale confiscation of six counties from local Irish lords After a failed rebellion and the resulting demographic collapse and relocation of the local Irish population Over the coming centuries Northern Ireland would become the center of Protestantism in Ireland with efforts at planting Protestant settlers elsewhere yielding limited results Many of you will probably be able to see the demographic divide being foreshadowed here When overlaid with a modern map of Ireland You'll see that the Protestant areas are the ones that decided to remain within the United Kingdom in the modern period This unionist streak is derived from the historical conditions surrounding Protestants in Ireland When they arrived on the island, they were granted Considerable privileges by the Crown who in an attempt to create a powerful and loyal population willing to propagate their authority artificially constructed a landed gentry who associated their prosperity with links to Britain They could sit in parliament own land and practice their faiths openly In contrast Catholic lands were confiscated and Catholics were denied the ability to generate generational wealth In addition, they were prevented from taking Part in the governing process until well into the late 1790s Most of the island's people were Irish Catholic yet by the 18th century only 14% of the available slightly Farmland was under their ownership This created an elite Protestant class who ruled with great authority in favor of their socio-political and economic interests While remaining entirely divorced from much of the Irish Catholic population This authority and their ability to mold the political landscape in their favor depended primarily on Britain's ability to remain the dominant force on the island Thus a symbiotic relationship sprung up where Britain would ensure a Protestant economic and political ascendancy And Protestants would act as agents of control During the 19th century Northern Ireland's economy had become industrialized and was heavily intertwined with mainland Britain's Producing even though I'm watching this. I still don't have enough knowledge on any of it To like make clear statements Linen ships and specializing in engineering It is no wonder then that Northern Ireland the nexus of Protestantism on the island Elected to remain in a union with Great Britain a scenario in which Ireland was to become a united independent state with Protestants becoming a minority population in the country Would see their socio-political and economic positions threatened as would they become potential targets of discrimination As the Catholics had been for centuries This is why Protestants campaigned for a united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which would eventually be formed in 1801 It kind of like okay. I can see the picture being painted for Northern Ireland and the decision for that to be made A united political bloc allowed them to secure a majority Against the Catholics in Ireland by linking up with the primarily Protestant population in Great Britain So that is the historical basis for the compete To national aspirations that we see today An entrenched Protestant minority with historical connections to Britain who had established roots in Northern Ireland And wished to remain in a union the unionists Versus a Catholic majority who sought a sovereign democratic state of their own the republicans and nationalists This would lead to a division of society along religious and political grounds Leading to the formation of Northern Ireland as a separate state in 1921 The only place in Ireland where Protestants had a majority In the decades following 1921 the Catholic minority felt increasingly squeezed and mistreated by the Protestant ruling class Who in an attempt to secure their permanent political supremacy gerrymandered the new Northern Irish state This and the resulting inequalities caused thousands of Catholics to emigrate from the country Ending in a strange demographic equilibrium Catholics had far more children than Protestants, but the exodus meant the demographic balance was maintained By 1960 tensions and grievances between Catholics and Protestants Were largely playing out in the civic arena through political action groups and civil rights protests Terrorism as a form of provoking political change was out of vogue And the IRA that were bombed London decades later was effectively non-existent With the organization focusing on political rather than militant action By 1969 however the landscape had changed The majority Protestant staffed royal Ulster Constabulary Northern Ireland's police force Had a habit of coming down hard on Catholic protesters causing intense resentment Protestant paramilitaries such as the Ulster volunteer force Also stoked further tensions by intimidating and killing Catholics and destroying their businesses What began as a movement for political and economic improvements with anti-establishment tingers Evolved into one completely distrustful of the state and concerned with its mounting violence It did not help that the British military called into quell said violence were at times particularly brutal in suppressing dissent against the Northern Irish state As is evidenced by the quote Bloody Sunday of 1972 in which 13 unarmed civilians were killed by British soldiers British authorities ended up trying to downplay the massacre and claimed without proof that the murdered individuals were armed IRA members These and other events only served to exacerbate Britain's enemy image and enhance perceptions of a state complicit in Irish repression We understandable as of right now from the outside looking in But you know this could be very one-sided information But it seems like he's telling both sides of the story like pretty well In this environment latent Irish nationalism found oxygen and let's not forget I'm part Irish a lot of people don't respect that in me, but I am rather you like it or not fresh kindling Creating a springboard for a period of sectarian violence that would be termed the troubles It is here where the provisional IRA was born splitting off from the more politically minded official IRA And the conflict for Northern Ireland was renewed While most of the troubles and the associated violence would play out in Northern Ireland The conflict would spill over into Great Britain and specifically London Over the course of the troubles the IRA and its spin-off groups like the provisional IRA would conduct over 500 separate attacks in England with most of them targeting London These are to range from letter bombs to truck bombings But why did the P IRA see attacking London as politically expedient? Were their efforts in Ireland not enough? On home soil they targeted British military units members of the aristocracy and influential political figures As well as attempting to inflict serious economic damage on the Northern Irish government through bombings Most infamously a series of car bombings concentrated in 1972 The intent of these American Americans especially on St. Paddy's Day have a very specific drink It's called Irish This word And that is highly offensive Like why are we why why? I think we're just uneducated. We don't we should really stop Stop saying that or call us something else Bombings concentrated in 1972 The intent of these attacks were sometimes murky though One P IRA volunteer was quoted to have said quote Maybe you can't bomb a million Protestants into a united island, but you could have good fun trying Implying that even though ostensibly the aim of the car bombings was to inflict economic damage The death of Protestants was an adjacent aim Whatever the objective these acts of terror Were devastating they put many civilians in the line of obliteration The haphazard nature of car bombings and how often they led to high numbers of civilian casualties Would sometimes come back to bite the P IRA On the 21st of july 1972 22 separate car bombs were detonated in the city of Belfast by the provisional IRA Despite warnings sent him by now. That's a crazy name for a drink. Like I'm like I'm really like in my mind I'm really putting it like Like and what the drink actually does when you do it like That's insane They bogus whoever why would they call that drink that? By the perpetrators the sheer scale of the attack meant authorities were not able to properly differentiate between hope schools And real ones and were generally stretched thin as a result 11 people died and 130 were injured It was a PR disaster for the nationalist movement and served to increase the resolve of the british and northern irish authorities It also caused the disillusionment of other nationalists and a divide within the P IRA Crucially for the P IRA these attacks were also not really worth their weight in the media attention. They generated in great britain Even the killing of british soldiers seemed to quote barely register on the political rifter scale as one journalist put it The average britain showed a surprising degree of apathy towards the conflict in northern ireland And ultimately they were the electorate that had to be swayed to trigger any political change let alone a full withdrawal from island Consequently to force the uk government's hand that P IRA would have to strike at the heart not its peripheries In doing so they hoped to instil fear and trepidation in the country's electoral base And caused them to question if british presence in northern ireland was truly worth the cost Starting in 1973 four years after the start of the troubles the P IRA would place britain's capital under sporadic siege Assailing department stores government buildings and railway infrastructure They showered both 10 downing street the uk's equivalent to the white house and the world's fourth busiest airport Heathrow in mortar attacks in 1991 and 1993 respectively In the assault on downing street P IRA operatives had parked a van a short distance away from government headquarters And fired three mortar shells out of holes cut in the top of the vehicle These shells narrowly missed their target entering only four people In the words of an anti-terror official Quote had the van not been five or so degrees out of line then all three mortars would have hit 10 downing street Had the shells been more accurate There would have been a distinct possibility that a large contingent of the british government Would have been assassinated perhaps even the incumbent prime minister john major In the heathrow episode the mortar shells launched on the airport were duds They were however instead meant to communicate to the uk that if there were any slowdown in compromise with the P IRA That they would be capable of hitting prestige targets on home soil As well as bringing the conflict and its terror closer to home Did that not heighten security after they did this this active power The london attacks were specifically meant to raise the literal cost of remaining in northern island The 1992 Baltic exchange bombing for example was conducted because the uk economy was undergoing a slump And the insurance sector had been hit especially badly In the aftermath the proprietors of the affected buildings scrambled to secure their insurance payouts so that they could rebuild Claiming around 350 million pounds in damages for comparison The total monetary costs wrought in northern island from 1969 to 92 had been around 615 million pounds One attack in london had nearly outstripped what the PRA had achieved over 23 years in island itself Still more devastating the british insurance sector Evaluated that it would no longer be able to offer terrorism coverage in light of its cost Leaving the responsibility of ensuring businesses against terrorism to the government of its coffers Insurance premiums rose and the government realized that their budget would not cover future losses In the event of another attack if insurers decided to call the government for assistance As a result the cost would be passed on to the taxpayer A highly unpopular scenario that the Pira was primed to pursue In the words of the american historian john boyer bell The destruction at the heart of the city indicated more than the stoppage of the trains Or even explosions at downing street It indicated that the troubles might have a cost not easily Paid the explosion put the whole financial system at risk Indeed the cost or the real target Inflicted on the united kingdom by the provisional IRA's london bombing campaign was eye watering Between 1992 and 1996 three bombings one in front of the Baltic exchange One at bishopsgate and one at the docklands amounted to nearly 1.2 billion dollars in damages The effectiveness of these attacks in inducing the uk government into some sort of compromise Is not an easy thing to determine Sort of political poker face was typically employed in negotiations of this type As to not show any potential chinks in one's proverbial armor However, eight months after the pira's bombing in bishopsgate in 1993 Which cost the insurance industry roughly 650 million dollars the uk government tabled a legally binding declaration That would allow the unification of island by political means in exchange for an end to the violence Providing that most of northern island citizens were in favor of unification The relative swiftness with which downing street turned to peace over shares Does indicate that these campaigns were becoming much more than a nuisance for the state And that a protracted conflict was unacceptable Especially for an incumbent economically conservative government Ultimately the london terror campaign resulted in the deaths of 100 people And the injury of more than 2000 others over the course of 25 years Some might find this casualty count to be negligible when looking at the concentrated and comparably more fatal violence of modern day terrorism But this campaign still had any any loss of life is crazy and its victims People whose lives were changed irreparably and their experiences cannot be reduced to a simple cold calculus The pira's war a ill reader On london also prompted its fair share of societal consequences First and foremost at the literal center of attacks The city of london became a heavily surveilled metropole as a result of pressure by the business community In 1993 vehicle checkpoints were set up cctv cameras installed and random spot checks instituted to create a screen against terrorism The scheme was informally nicknamed the ring of steel A security cordon that wrapped around much of the financial sector All in all by 1996 the 2.9 kilometer square patch of land that is the city of london Played host to more than a thousand security cameras Foreshadowing the rise of mass surveillance in wider london The persistent threat of a pira attack in london also led to a general state of fearfulness As is summarized in this 1973 interview of passers-by on the subject of letter bombings I was just thinking coming up the stairs That I've got letters to open and I I'd like to leave it to somebody else because I'm very nervous about it How does that even work? that letter How does that happen like what is what is that about? Well, I'm just not going to take any risks if there's any parcels, you know vaguely round the sides have been warned about I won't touch them The pira oh, it's like a parcel not like an actual like envelope it's like a box Tax negatively affected the irish expatriate population in london too who quickly became the subjects of abuse Dormant prejudices of irish backwardness not uncommon in britain Reared their heads in colorful epithets and in some cases physical abuse irish and even northern irish tenants in london were singled out with chance of quote ira's scum And ira queer bitch And in this case the tenant was forced to move as a result of the harassment Generally speaking Attitudes towards irish people in great britain during the troubles were extremely poor To the degree where british legislation ended up singling out irish people as potential threats to public order The terrorism prevention act of 1974 granted incredible power to policing institutions and the executive branch To detain and deport individuals on suspicion of terrorism or subversion Except in the case that they were born in great britain or had been resident there for at least 20 years This effectively prejudiced proceedings against irish expatriates and uk citizens from northern ireland The act was also problematic in the sense that it allowed police officers to arrest and interrogate people Simply on suspicion of support for the ira Sometimes without a warrant If someone professed support for a divided island that may have been enough to suspect affiliation It was often left to the discretion of individual officers. I can imagine the police is just outside just doing whatever You couldn't even walk you couldn't even wear the color orange This is who might have had their own personal biases and convictions of what constituted suspicious activity In the words of the political historian paddy hillyard, the irish in england became a quote suspect community Suffering under an air of hostility and discrimination due to their perceived propensity for violence and terrorism This video intended to To explain the troubles in a new light Using the ira's attacks on london as a lens through which to understand it I also wanted to engage with a part of the conflicts history that usually isn't discussed I didn't really want it to have an explicit argument because with i've heard about a lot of this but like I don't think i've really Knew about the london portion of it like for real for real The topic like this is very easy to get railroaded into vilifying one side over the other It's very easy to do that That's why I was trying to stay quiet because it's like I don't know enough And that will be ignorant of me Ultimately the troubles is an incredibly difficult topic to cover because the scars are still so fresh With an official ceasefire between the pira and the united kingdom only emerging in 1998 under the good friday agreement It also never truly solved the irish question and the fate of northern island And as such any coverage will always be accompanied by controversy While I was researching this topic I came across an article by someone called annie bowman The daughter of a british soldier who died in northern island defusing an ira bomb I think her perspective is perhaps the most useful in how we should approach the troubles and sectarian and nationalist conflicts in general Despite her loss and the associated trauma She was able to empathize with people on both sides of the conflict and see them as individuals pursuing their versions of justice She saw how ira militants may have been radicalized by the inability of the uk government to take their pleas seriously And the conditions that irish catholics were expected to endure She understood that both sides had dehumanized one another and failed to understand the roots of animosities and grievances The racists who shout you definitely heard her outlook is probably the You know she straddling the fence but like in this scenario like If you're not like if she could have easily picked a side like she could have But like for me as a person like on the outside like that's the standpoint that I would have to take I can see both sides reasonings to be angry And how they justified what they did I could I could see it The active slurs at the irish in london were not inherently evil But their minds were fogged by fear and ignorance And the ira members that bombed the city committed terrible acts But in their minds they were only doing what they thought was required to reach justice To preempt such vitriol and violence It is paramount that these communities have outlets to enter dialogues with each other And it is just as important that these communities feel that these dialogues are actionable Who knows if Protestants and Catholics had not lived in mutual fear in 1969 Perhaps a conclusion could have been reached at the ballot box instead of at the tip of a bayonet Very informal I mean very informative Very eye-opening very well put together Tlo leave a like comment subscribe especially leave a comment. Let me know how you feel it in the comments man I'll go