logo
episode-header-image
May 2021
49m 22s

The IRA hunger strikes

Bbc World Service
About this episode

The IRA hunger strikes of 1981 – Max Pearson hears from Suzanne Breen of the Belfast Telegraph about the impact of the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. Plus, one man’s story of surviving Guantanamo Bay, how a French winemaker exposed a wine fraudster, feminist science fiction pioneer Ursula Le Guin, and cannabis coffee shops in Amsterdam.

Up next
Nov 22
Juan Carlos becomes King of Spain and ending the Bosnian war
<p>Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Mercedes Peñalba- Sotorrío, a senior lecturer in modern European history at Manchester Metropolitan University, England.</p><p>We start with the death of General ... Show More
1 h
Nov 15
Speed of Sound and prosecuting Nazis
<p>Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is aviation historian Dr Victoria Taylor.</p><p>We start with an archive interview of American Chuck Yeager who became the first pilot to fly faster than the speed ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 8
The largest dinosaur and creating Miffy
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.Our guest is Darja Dankina, who's a palaeontologist from the Natures Research Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania. We start with the discovery of the largest dinosaur ever, uncovered by ... Show More
1 h
Recommended Episodes
May 2021
The IRA hunger strikes
In 1981 the British government was faced with prisoners dying on hunger strike in a jail in Northern Ireland. The Irish republican activists were demanding to be treated as political prisoners not criminals. Several of them died during the hunger strike, the first, Bobby Sands on ... Show More
9m 33s
Apr 2019
The Great Irish Famine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million people died from disease or starvation after the blight and another two million left the country within the decade. There had been ... Show More
57m 19s
Aug 2023
The Brighton Bombing - the attempt to kill Margaret Thatcher
<p>In 1984, the Conservative Party, lead by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gathered in the seaside town of Brighton for their annual conference. In the early hours of October 12th a bomb ripped through the Grand Hotel where Thatcher and several other conservative l ... Show More
50m 5s
Jun 2022
What were the IRA hunger strikes?
In the early 1980s, imprisoned IRA members went on a prolonged hunger strike, leading to the death of ten men. This is their story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
50m 11s
Sep 2023
Addiction in Irish History
<p>At the turn of the 20th century alcoholism was a major problem in Irish society. The island had 17,300 pubs while around 40% of all prison sentences were alcohol related. There was a general sense alcohol addiction was out of control. The stereotype of the happy-go-lucky drunk ... Show More
27m 15s
Apr 2022
The Great American Grain Robbery
With fears rising that the war in Ukraine might spark a big rise in global food prices, we're going back 50 years to the story of how a drought in the bread basket of the Soviet Union led to a catastrophic trade deal between Moscow and Washington. The Nixon White House unwittingl ... Show More
9m 3s
Jan 2022
IRA gun-running in America
How an undercover FBI agent bust an IRA gun-running plot in New York in 1981. We hear from retired FBI agent, John WInslow, who posed as a gun dealer to infiltrate a network of Americans supplying weapons to the Northern Irish paramilitary group, the IRA. The United States was a ... Show More
13m 16s
Jun 2024
The Irish shopworkers strike against apartheid
In 1984, a 21-year-old Irish shopworker refused to serve a customer buying two South African grapefruits. Mary Manning was suspended from the Dunnes store in Dublin, and ten of her colleagues walked out alongside her in protest.It was the start of a strike that lasted almost thre ... Show More
10m 9s
Jan 2023
The Irish Potato Famine
Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland suffered an appalling famine after the repeated failure of the potato crop, its national staple. But though caused by a natural blight, a combination of ancient prejudices, simmering tensions and political short-termism turned a national emergency i ... Show More
57m 5s
Jun 2022
175 years on - Does Black '47 & the Great Hunger still matter?
<p>Over the last decade there has been countless events to mark the centenary of the Irish Revolution. However 2022 is also the 175th anniversary of Black ‘47, one of worst years of the Great Hunger. This has received little or no attention.&nbsp;This begs the question does the G ... Show More
27m 39s
Listen to millions of songs and podcasts on Anghami