The Rest is History Episode 578 The Irish War of Independence – Bloody Sunday (Part 3) As with the previous two episodes, Dominic and Tom are joined by Irish historian Paul Rouse. I knew about the 1972 Bloody Sunday, but not about the Bloody Sunday that took place on 21 November 1920. It started with the IRA targetting about 19 men in Dublin, shooting 15 dead in 8 locations. It was personally ordered by Michael Collins himself. Not all the victims were intelligence officers, and not all were English. That afternoon there was a football match at Croke Park. The football authorities were warned to cancel it, but they decided to go ahead because the park was already half-full. At 3.30 trucks, and 15 minutes after the game began, trucks arrived. Shooting began from the outside (this is important because the British claimed that the shooting began from inside), and there was a stampede and crush. There was blowback in England with acts of violence, followed by reprisals against the IRA, who found it hard to get arms. Finally a ceasefire and truce was announced, and negotiations began.
The Human Subject (BBC) This is the final episode in the series. If the second-last episode about deep-brain stimulation seemed a bit ho-hum, this one certainly made me angry. The Trauma Victims and their Blood tells the story of Martha Milete, who was shot in 2006 when masked men invaded her house. Without ever giving consent, she found herself part of an experiment into Polyhaem, a form artificial blood which would certainly be a boon to emergency medicine, but which initially caused heart attacks in all of the first ten subjects, with two of them dying. These terrible results caused the product to be shelved but in 1996 a change in the FDA regulations meant that there was no need for individual consent from trauma patients- which is how Milete found herself part of the experiment. Instead, Polyhaem had to gain ‘community consent’, which they interpreted as giving a Powerpoint presentation at the hospital, and the initial provision of blue bracelets that had to be worn 24 hrs a day opting out (they soon ran out and it took a year to replenish them). Appalling.
Witness History (BBC) I love this program. Ten minutes- enough time for a walk home from the station- and really interesting. Orson Welles Broadcasts War of the World has interviews from various people who were involved on the radio program broadcast on the night before Halloween in 1938. I’d forgotten that H.G. Well’s short story ‘The War of the Worlds’ was set in England. When Howard Koch wrote the radio play, to be performed as part of a weekly program, it was a very boring show. So it was decided to set it in a real location in New Jersey, and to present it as a live broadcast which had interrupted the programming for the night. Up to six million people tuned in, unaware that they were listening to a radio play, and it prompted mass panic. There’s an interview with Orson Welles himself, as well as with the script writer and the producer John Houseman. Really good.
Rear Vision (ABC) America’s Radical Left Part I and Part 2 looks at the history of the left in America. Part I looks at the religiously-driven radicalism of early America and the failure to create a dedicated ‘labour’ party in United State. This failure was tied up with other competing ideas about colour and ethnic identity, and the Republican and Democratic parties were canny enough to co-opt some of the Left’s ideas- enough to undermine support for a minority party which might not gain power. Part 2 looks at the effect of the Soviet Union on Left politics, McCarthyism and the rapid re-emergence of Left ideas under the Black Power movement. The election of Zohran Mamdani to New York mayor and the persistence of Bernie Sanders shows that the Left isn’t dead yet.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 