hi, i'm shawn. and this is the conversation where we take an alternative look at political events and current affairs through annaries. in this show we hope to pick, probe, investigate and uncover the stories that you want to hear. we go where mainstream won't go. this week we look at the topic of our fragile peace process. how does peace now look 25 years on from the signing of the good fredy agreement? has common ground been made by former enemies or are we as polarized as ever? my next guest. served under the royal in

ulster constablary, depending on what side of the political divide you come from, the ruc were seen as a protectors of a community or an oppressive force against another, but before we speak to our next guest, let's get a quick overview on this week's topic.

as always we are joined by our rese and co-presenter michelle gildernew. michelle is a current np for fermana south toron. she has served in the northern ireland assembly as a former minister for agriculture and rural development and chairperson of the health committee amongst other things. michelle has been a shinfian activist since her teens and has been elected almost continuously since 1998. and today's guest is sam thompson. sam is a former member of the royal olster constablary. he experienced the loss of number of colleagues and friends and saw numerous killings. and bombings during the

conflict. sam retired in 2008 and has exponded on his love of history and his naileacture. sam welcome to the show. yes, thank you shan. so sam, you grew up not far from where we're sitting now, uh, very different place from from this side of the wall. do you want to tell us a bit about your childhood? yes, well, um, i came in this world, was born in the royal victoria hospital up the road, but the first house i was brought home to is dundi street, just on the other side of the pace line. so. all four of my grandparents all lived within about 300 yards from here and my grandfather would have grown up in 9th street which um runs down in the conway street so was very familiar with that lower shankel area when i was young even though um my parents moved to balley my grandparents continued to live down there so was basically brought up in between the two and sam you joined the ruc what motivated you to do that and what was its reputation like

when you joined it? right, um, in terms of motivation, i joined it pretty much by default, i didn't really know what to do with my life, and i'm not at the stage where i'm retired and i still don't really know what to do with it, um, what year did you join and what age, i joined in 1979 and i was 18 on about four and a half months by the time i went in, um, so it it was basically the economy here was imploding, the place was rapidly de-industrializing and it was one of the few things that had any job security, now in terms of um reputation, there was none of the baggage in the unionist community regarding the rc, and my first memory of them is actually quite a positive one, i went to cliffenville primary school and i must have been ither 196. or 1971 our school sports day

was attacked by um bigger kids from around the bone area and the teachers got us off with all the run like there's over and chucking bricks and stuff at us and feeling absolutely terrified and the police arrived down in the school and remember feeling reassured and safe at the site of the police uniform. now as a got older um 1970s was quite a brutal period an upround ballon and i don't know whether it's true or not but like the word in the school was if you messed about with tenant street or you got arrested you would get a hiding. and as this will sound absolutely weird to many your many viewers, um, but the idea if you're arrested you're going to get back up by the police, nobody thought this was strange, but on the unionist side of the house that was very much

a thing too, um, but things have to change, so you can either say, well that's the way things are, or you can um try and change them a more positive way. and once you joined the oecmc, you were you remember the oec for 28 years and was there a certain period or or a time where and i'm sure there were many dark times, there something that stuck out in particular, oh well there were so many things like particularly the first lot of years and one is in uniform, you remember like the severe incidence when people have been shot and things like that, and all these sort of bloody things they tend to stick in your mind, the thing which travel. with me the most and i wasn't even there was - best friend was killed during the hunger strike and this is this um and this is why this sort of republican celebration of it tends to sticking me a bit there's a lot of people died here and i didn't want to die and um he

was blown up on the 7th of september um blowing the pieces basically only at the fable the fingerprints just turned 20 years of age and um he had been trans transferred to um palm roy and that was his first day in duty, he's there for an hour and five minutes and um, i still think about him and about that quite often, and then there's other people to know quite well as well, but you carry these things through your life, i think we're all scared by what happened, and i suppose during your time in the ouc, we ever do you ever have the urge to join a paramilitary organization? were you ever pressurized to do that? absolutely not, and even when it was growing up in ballicilon, which were paramilitaries are very strong and absolutely no inclination of it. i can give you story about how people did get into those sort of things and so about one of 16, myself and a friend, we went but heard that um

there's this bar in shankle road with servia weren't too fussy about what age you were, so brown bar facing shankel library, so we went in, ordered a couple of pins of harp, sitting under the table. thinking we're great guys, and then somebody comes over and start, all right fellows, starts chatting to you and realize what this was doing where you from, all this sort of crack, your father and all this trying to figure out whether you're catholics or not, like i don't think anybody who's catholics want to be dought enough to go in there and they say well um what do you think this place fine it's all right um sure um we can swear you in tomorrow nice is what he means swear us in this say you're joining aren't you? i say join him what? he says the uvf and there spot my bear on. so was the first time i'd been in this place in my life, and within 10 minutes walking in the door, somebody coming over trying to get me to join a uvf. of course never went back near the place, but that will give you some idea how

easy it was for people to get involved in that sort of thing. and just on that uh saw we're all shipped by our lived experiences, 100%. i understand you sir. in springfield road, yeah, uh, baricks as we had called the springfield road police station, yeah, uh, that to me as a child grown up was a place, you know, you heard stories of family members being tortured, even friends of mine, that were in there were were beating, and the me as as a child grown up, the all you see were the enemy, but obviously you had different lived experiences, you were insaid there, lugan out, yeah, do you want, do you want to tell us a bit about? yeah, well, it's just um, yeah, it's 983 and i arrived up in the... not too long after the hunger strike and the place had very forbidden appearance, it didn't have the blast ball round it down i just had this wire outside um and the reason didn't have a blast wall to put bomb out there that rack hundreds of houses around it cuz it was rare place you right in the middle

of people and the yard of it had a big um corregated 10 fence and there was holes in it from somebody chuck the hanger it over, and a quiet evening, you could be standing out there in the front yard and you could hear the televisions of people and vallet street who and their living. rooms were seriously about six or seven feet from the front year, so like the noise that they must have had from all the police and army vehicles and it was primarily an army post, like the ruc was down in um one corner of it, um, and the army occupied about 80% of the building, so we had like army pigs and stuff like that, parked about inside it, the army did the security and and it was overrun by furle cats, and you get these squatties running about drawing and

cats in the toilets and stuff like it was unreal, but in the inquiry office you had like these um bulletproof shutters over the windows, there's no natural light, and then behind it you had all these old newspapers musst been stuff to keep the draft out one day pilled them out like the were did it from 1970 two and stuff like that um as a working environment it was horrible, it was cramped the... were grim, it was dangerous, it was noisy, but probably um the best bunch of people ever worked with her, we ch it earlier, manson and i was amazed at the uh at the analies you had of ruc men and very personal the were killed just around springf, you want to tell us, well well for a start um a george cross was one in the inquiry office 1972 when a partrooper threw himself bomb which have been dumped in there um shortly before i arrived there's a soldier killed at

the caventy street entrance by an rpg7 guy to work with he is the first one down to attend to him and the war head of the rpgs apparently went through the wall the sanger and lodged inside him and again the year before three soldiers have been shot there had been m60 machine gun around the corner in um arra street 197 99 there was a uc officer shot dead as they reversed the land rover at the front gate and i think somebody had counted it up that there must have been about more than 20 members of security forces killed within about 30 yards of the front gates of the place and along the front of the building was like riddled with bullet holes where cars used to drive up and down and spray the place sam you also served interone are there any was it very different serving along the border and are there any particular stories or? reminisces that you have from that time? yeah, well rural areas are are very different from urban ones. um, interne

as a sergeant in the mobile support unit, so though we packed up the local police in dungarnon, we also could be all over the place, like we went up the belfast up at andsworth avenue, the time the uvf guy blew himself up at preater, but dungan change me, um, at one week, um, whereas within about... 25 feet of three bombs inside a week, none of which went off properly. i remember thinking, i can't do this anymore, i need to get out of this, because it wasn't too long after two friends that collin mcmurray used to work with match, she had been killed in uri and another guy, probably nobody's ever heard of guy called billy evans, he ironically was killed by the army, out the foot patrol up near new barnsley and an army landover and over and... them, i remember speaking him a few months before, get out of there, um, i

don't believe in much, but i believe in the law of averages and if you push your luck too long, sooner or later something's going to happen to you, so i think the deaths was too were praying on my mind, and i thought i need to get a job and headquarters or something, you know, because i'd gone through all these years of sort of near misses and something happened and somebody changed the shift with me and seeing things happen to other people and i thought it's really matter time for it. to me so um applied for job and training and got that, we crossed our own pass, me and yourself through uh a reconciliation, informal let's say reconciliation program, yeah, how has it been for you on that kind of journey in reconciliation? um, it hasn't made a profound difference, you know, i think as you get older you start to reflect in life, and there's an old saying if you think the same. at 40 as you did in 20, you've wasted 20 years, and and i started this interview

but i basically come from a couple hundred yards away, and the thought occurred to me one day, the idea that someone should be eternal enemy, because they happen to be born 200 yards away from you, or born on the other side of a street from is absolutely absurd, it's absurd, but that's a situation that we find ourself in here. so i thought of that, and again, occasionally you see these little um inspirational quotes, which may or may not be true, there's one supposed to be from martin luther king, said that um, headings someone is like um drinking poison and hoping they'll die, i can hit michelle all i want, you're probably not even going to know but it's not going to affect your life, but it'll affect mine, and um is it going to make me any happier? no, will it bring anyone back? no, is it going to make the future any better

for people that are children now are unborn? no, so some people that's their way to get through. life is carrying grudges and resentments and hate, i just think it doesn't do any good and and it wasn't making me feel any better, you know, um, i pan large don't suffer from ptsd or anything that anymore, and i think this has helped because in my mind the war is over, there's other people can't accept that it's over for many many reasons, some entirely legitimate, they've suffered lot worse than i have, um, but as far as i'm concerned, it's a right thing to do, it's not going to change the world, but i think it's up each and every individual to do their own little bit. i agree with you, sam, i think hate is very negative emotion and very wasteful, and you know we all we all have to move on, so where do you stand on the reunification question? have you thought about our future politically? yeah, i am,

these days i'm pretty agnostic on it, um, i was always a support. was a small you unionist, it wasn't a die hard, like i agreed with a statement heard quite early in my time in the police, but somebody says to me, um, i'm not too bothered about a united ireland, what i am, bothered about somebody trying to bomb me into it, um, any sort of affection i had for the union died on the morning of the brexit referendum, not to me as watershed moment, um, because that to me showed it doesn't matter what we think here, you know, it's what england wants really, i know people say as uk wide referendum, but there's no way that scotland and northern ireland should have been forced out against this will, as scotland in particulars like a distinct country, and all the rest of it, and i also just think is incredibly stupid, i think that

um, the uk basically that they decided to commit suicide, and convinced to that, i think that historians look back that is the day when the union was fatally wounded and it was a self-inflicted wond. and on that, what would you like to see from republicans to go that extra bit that would maybe convince you uh that reunification would be? i think the i see a bit of schizophrenia from republicanism and the one hand there's this outreach for one peace, but on the other there's a sort of like constant propaganda war. which is still being waged and quite a bit of hostility continually refighting the troubles and at some stage this is going to have to stop you know um unionist head relations in the police or udr aren't going to look upon their relatives as evil child killers anymore than

relatives the ira man are going to regard their relatives and that and all it's doing is wind and people up and given people um an excuse not to talk to them, um, i think as society, i'm not just pointing the finger at republicans here, it's all over, we need to stop absolutely wallowing in the past, we're not remembering it, we're walllowing in it, you know, i did an article once that japan recovered from two atom bombs, quicker than northern ireland's recovered from the troubles, 15 years. after heroshima they were hosting the olympics and one of the best economies in the world is they just decided the we're not going to talk about all this we're just going to move on make better country. you're still tuned into the conversation your weekly alternative probe of political events and current affairs through annaries. i'm joined by my co-host michelle gillerneu alongside historian and former ruc

man sam thompson. all right, so close to where you were born and brought up, sam, there's a... a massive community festival call fail and bubble and that come out of a commemorating the or remembering internament and and then turn it became a community festival as a more positive way of remembering the past um so you know do you think that something like that could be replicated i know it's it's it it looks at and speaks to people from all political persuasions and none and it's just such inclusive festival do you i have indeed have attended events in the past and i think it's a very positive thing because i said arrived in springfield road 40 years ago and um i remember remember those annual internament things and it was sort of like that film the perge, you know, um, the civilians sort of took it up on the night, anything goes from

both of them and the place, like there was batting rounds fire in and and they could be written off in a form, which any other time the year the be what did you do that for? but those internament nights it was like ritualistic riding and you had people hurt and you had people occasionally getting killed, so i think that's a mar, i'll give credit where is you, that's marvelous credit primarily to shin for turning that round, have very destructive time and do something more positive, um, some of the events are more cross community than others, but that's okay, you know, if i don't want to go to something, i won't, you know, it's like um, the annual bobby sounds march, in may or whatever, doesn't bother me buse, have to go anywhere near it, so yeah, that's good, and i would like to see that being extended across the shankle and east belfast, and maybe have a whole summer of cultural events, but you

know, i think those events are worthwhile because um, you've now got you know unionists going to them and now um, one of the commentators is going along, and it's let in also people in west belfast speak directly to people that they would normally. speak to, so i think it's all generally quite positive, i know there's a bit of controversy about one or two things, but b and large approve of it. this week we take a look at the history of partition, high was and divaded, and what does that meant for the population of the north over this last 100 years? the official partitioning of ireland took place in may 1921, via an act passed by the british parliament. the original intention was for both regions. to remain within the united kingdom, but the irish war of independence led to the south succeding from the uk in 1922. attempts at legislating the government

of ireland act first began in 1886. the government of ireland act of 1920 was the fourth try at establishing home rule in ireland, that is, affording the country a certain amount of freedom to self-govern while retaining its part of the united kingdom. up to that point, ireland had been ruled by the uk parliament. via their administration at dublin castle ever since the irish parliament was abolished through the acts of union 1800. after many attempts at negotiating the division of the nine northernly counties of olster from the 23 remaining countries that compriseed munster, lenster and connucht, only six countries within olster were included in the fourth irish home rule bill of 1920. this was to ensure a protestant majority for many years to come. after the third home rule bill. was passed in 1912, olster unionis had founded a paramilitary force named the ulster volunteer force with the intention of resisting the bills implementation by violent means. many

british army officers stationed in ireland resigned and with nationalists having established their own military army and response with both sides importing arms as civil war seemed imminent. eventually a trial period of partition was also included in the third version of the irish home route. bill to appease unionists, but when world war i broke out in 1914, the bill was suspended. in attempt to take advantage of britain's destraction with the war, insurrection was launched by irish revolutionaries on easter 1916. following this rebellion, more attempts were made to reach a compromise, such as the 1917-18 irish convention in dublin, with little success. in 1919, the irish war of independence officially began. the government of ireland act was enacted in 1920 and the island was partitioned the following year. home rule never came into effect in the

south. instead, the anglo-irish treaty of 1921, which ended the war in ireland, allowed the self-governing irish free state to be created, and thus the partitioning of ireland became official. and that does it for another week. we'd love for you to join the converse. by sharing the link to today's program to help us grow our audience across all our social media platforms. i'd like to thank our special guest, sam thompson and our resident co-host michelle guldeny. in the meantime, the conversation will be back next week with more investigations and analysis. i'm sean murray, bye for now. i'm calling on ford's chicago assembly plant to stand up and go on strike. the union. has

made it clear that one of his key demands is to end the two tier system, this state is very expensive, i love round, i love my community, i love to be a part of this community, the going rate of a one bedroom is $2,200. i am hoping that everyone will come on board with us and stand against this. this is for palestine. in this special edition of palestine declassified, we're going to

examine the extraordinary armed uprising. the palestinian people against the zionist entity. what's happened clearly has been a an operation planned for many, many months in gaza, and with other resistance factions across the territories, and it's it's taken them entirely by surprise, also more importantly, inflicted an extremely significant military intelligence and psychological defeat on stand that this is the first time in over 50 years where a senior military leader is in the hands the resistance movements in the hands of the palestinians, he would be huge bargaining chip in order to get uh over 5,000 palestinians who have been languishing in israeli jails for for years.

the headlines: irons leader calls for the trial of israeli officials, warning that if the regime's crimes against palestinians continue, no one can stop muslims and their resistance forces. world health organisation. warns of a real catastrophe in gaza as the israeli regim continues its bloody onslot against bessieg territory. and the hamas resistance movement says it is not intimidated by israeli ground invasion threat, warning the gaza will turn into a graveyard for its invaders.