The Rest is History Episode 580: The Irish Civil War: The Assassination of Sir Henry Wilson (Part 1) In this week’s episode, Tom and Dominic are joined by historian Ronan McGreevy, to discuss the pivotal assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, whose death launched the tumultuous Irish Civil War. Sir Henry Wilson was the MP for Northern Ireland, and an Irish Unionist. He had served in the British Army, and as a leading figure in the British Army he urged the British government to crack down on the IRA, a group which he saw as a military problem, rather than a political problem. On 22 June 1922 he was scheduled to open a memorial at Liverpool St station, which he did. On his return home, three men waited for him and shot him six times on his own doorstep. The gunmen escaped by taxi, but were surrounded by a mob. Two of the assassins were ex-soldiers themselves and part of the Irish diaspora. Meanwhile an election held in Ireland led to acceptance of the Treaty, but the anti-Treaty dissidents took over the Four Courts, where they were issued with an ultimatum by the (Irish) government to remove themselves. Among the dissidents, the issue was not so much partition, but the Oath that parliamentarians would have to pledge, not in words but in the level of independence that an Irish parliament would have. The IRA itself split, but the majority was anti-Treaty. Sectarian violence increased in Northern Ireland, and Wilson became the public face of the Unionist stance. So who ordered the assassination? Historian Ronan McGreevy, the guest on the podcast, has argued that it was the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret oath organization from 1858), headed by Michael Collins. The two assassins were hanged after a 1-day trial and the anti-Treaty dissidents were removed from the Four Courts. The Civil War had started.
Journey Through Time The Paris Commune: The City that ate its Zoo (Episode 2) With the so-called Government of National Defence negotiating with the Prussians, Paris now saw itself as the defender of France. One of the first things to be done was to hold an election, to affirm the legitimacy of the leaders. And who should be elected as Mayor of Montmartre but Georges Clemenceau, who was to end up as Prime Minister of France. Perhaps his anti-German sentiments during and after WWI sprang from this early experience with the Prussians. However, despite the stance taken by the Parisians, in the rural villages people wanted peace at any price so a divide sprang up between Paris and its surrounds. As the Prussians increased the siege, people ate first their horses, then their pets, rats and the zoo animals excluding the hippopotamus (too hard to kill and cut up) and the monkeys (too much like us). As with Gaza today, there was disease and incessant shelling, and eventually in January 1871 the Government of National Defence capitulated. Ruinous reparations were imposed on France as part of the surrender, and the Prussians would continue to occupy until the reparations were paid. Meanwhile the German Empire settled in at Versailles, just to rub salt into the wounds, and their insistence on parading through the streets angered the Parisians even more. Elections were held, and the rural/Paris split continued. The 300,000 armed guardsmen in Paris refused to surrender so the National Government at Versailles decided to confiscate their weapons. The Guardsmen and the parisian crowds moved the cannons onto Montmatre (the Sacre Coeur church wasn’t there then- it was a very poor neighbourhood) and in March 1871 the women rushed to Montmatre to stop the seizure of the cannons by the National Guard troops.
The Rest is Politics US edition I listen to this podcast every week, but there’s no point documenting it because things change so quickly. But Episode 132 The Mistakes that led to Trump is more historical, looking at the economic decisions that led to the populism that brought us The Orange One. (Just to ensure that I will never be admitted to US). The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement emphasized stability in the post-WW2 international economy, but in August 1971 Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard, which at that time was a lowly $31 per ounce! The globalization and off-shoring mantra was that a rising tide lifts all boats, and China was admitted to the World Trade Organization as an emerging market, something that Donald J Trump opposed even then.
The Economist The Weekly Intelligence: Operation Midas. Wow. This podcast really got me thinking. It involves the corruption scandal in Ukraine, which led to the dismissal of President Zelensky’s Chief of Staff, Andrei Yermak. The police force in Ukraine is so corrupt that an alternate corruption watchdog structure was established, comprising the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). These were the two bodies that Zelensky was trying to get rid of, until such huge public and Western government pressure forced him to leave them alone. NABU and SAPO uncovered a huge corruption crisis where officials skimmed off millions from the state nuclear energy commission with scant regard to the effects of decaying and damaged infrastructure on the population. Why? Zelensky claimed that it was to get rid of Russian influence, but was it just to protect himself. I’d thought of Zelensky as one of the ‘good guys’ but perhaps there are no ‘good guys’ here. I’m sure that this destabilization is just what Russia wants, but is there a real and continuing problem of corruption in Ukraine?
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 