whether it was the 1000 irish man that built the transcontinental railroad in the us or the famous sunnygal tunnel taggers that of constructed the many underground tunnels around britain, many of whom died under horrific conditions. the irish have for the most parked assimilated and been welcomed with open arms by their host countries. however, there were notable exceptions. during the ira's english bombing operations in the 1970s, a cg change in public opinion, of shaped by ferocious media campaign, unearth old stereotypes of the past. in the aftermath of the birmingham pub bombings killed 21 in people, the prevention of terrorism act was introduced by the british government. this legislation provided w spare cover for many miscarages of justice, most notably the imprisonment of the birmingham 6, gilford 4 and maguire 7. in the case of the birmingham trials, six irish men were each sentenced to life imprisonment and name. 1975 following

their false convictions for the 1974 birmingham bombings. their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and caught by the court of appeal on the 14th of march 1991. similarly, in the case of the gilford 4 and maguire 7, 11 people, mostly irish, were wrongly convicted in 1975 and 1976 for the gilford pub bombings in october 1974 and the willage pub bombing a month later. all the convictions were eventually quashed after long campaigns for justice, and the cases, along with those of the birmingham six, diminished public confidence and the integrity of the english criminal justice system. five decades later, on the label of suspect community has fallen on the muslim population of britain. the deployment of negative stereo taping, intelligence profiling and wrongful arrests are just some of the many abuses of power being applied by government agencies with convenient cover from broadcast media. islamophobia has been

augmented by israeli and far right us money in order to drive awage between communities of in britain. that's see the current us-israeli genocide in palestine as one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of our times. the destruction in gaza and slaughter of thousands of innocents has cast the dark shadow over the u.s. and its allies. with support for palestinian self-determination nigh at an all-time high. with a multipolar world k backoning, today's livenoside can never be forgiven. the moral argument for israel's apartite existence has now been lost, buried in the ices of khan unis and rafa. and with that, i would like to introduce my next guest. dr. michael flaven is novelist, award winning short story writer and academic. he is reader in global education at king's college, london, and has authorized six books with the seventh jud of later this year. his debut novel, one small

step was set in the aries community in britain at the head of the troubles and is also the author of academic articles on leadership and are republicanism, published in the journals terrorism and political violence and in small wars and insurgencies. migel, welcome to the show. thank you. first of all, i'd like to speak about your first novel, uh, one small step that is set in one of the most volatile periods of the troubles, but in england, and investigates the experiences of the rs. aspra uh in england, do you want to speak about about that? yeah, i mean, just to put it in context of that population, i mean there'd been waves of emigration to the british mainland from ireland for economic purposes for a long of time. my parents came over here at the back end of the 1950s cuz work was plentyful, my father got a job as a bus driver, and there was quite an established irish community in birmingham where we lived at the time, we all went to mass on sunday and in the holy days of obligation. um, we in primary schools, you

could look down the register and see irish name after irish name, we had the annual st. patrick's day parade in birmingham city center, which had been going since 1952, you'd walk into another kid's house and the sacred heart picture would be above the fireplace and the holy water font would be by the door, you could live as an irish person in britain um fairly contentedly, but of course the mood music around irishness in britain changed first with the... conflict itself at the end of the 60s and then that accentuated when the ira began its mainland bombing campaign around 1973-74. you speak about that in the novel, that backlash that there was towards the areas community, how was that experienced for yourself as a child? i think we have to accept that there something, there was a unique case element about birmingham, because of course it was the site of the birmingham pub bombings, 21st of november 1974, coming up for its 50th anniversary, in which an ira unit acting without authorized. from higher up the chain

of command, left two bombs in two birmingham pubs, which killed 21 and injured over 180, of it's pretty much instantaneous, now in my case as a primary school char wearing my catholic school uniform, i'm suddenly getting beatings on the way home from school, but i'm a primary school child, haven't faintest idea why that's happening, mean if we look at then other historical accounts of that period, we see that irish workers were being sent home from work because they were at risk of attack from their colleagues, we see that people in birmingham with irish accents were being refused to service in shops, people trying to pay with checks drawn against irish banks for having them refused market. as in birmingham's boring market refused to handle irish goods. the backlash was real, the backlash was substantial. the irish center in the digbath area of burmiham got attacked, some catholic schools got attacked, it was like that, you know, the sudden switch from being tolerated to being attacked as a

community, and it was of course you understand that there was a reaction, but the nature of reactions is that they are reactionary, and i mean it reaches its apex then with the miscarrages of justice case and of course. in our case the birmingham 6 are right at the forefront of that, that's something like the explorer, i mean you had the gilford 4, the birmingham 6, the maguire 7, how was that period, i mean did things ease for the aris community then or did things become worse, it was certainly there's no question it was fearful, i mean one anecdote i draw up and use in one small step is that we had vinyl record at home called songs of irish resistance by guy called huw trainer and it had the you know the kind of classics of the repertoire it had the boys from the old brigade and once again after the bombings that went missing from the house, my mom and dad clearly got rid of it, they were frightened of the next knock at the door, a work colleague of my father's who did benefit dances for the families of internese, post august 1971, there was internament without

trial here in the north of ireland, and he was taken in, the prevention of terrorism act was past a week after birmingham, it was a scary time to be irish in birmingham, if you look at the birmingham 6. mean these there was actually five of them that were traveling, the sixth one had waved them off at birmingham's new street station and gone back to his council house in aston, but when the five who were traveling back to belfast were stopped, they were subjected to a forensic test, which indicated that two of them had been handling explosives, now for for laboratory for scientific knowledge standards that test should have been repeated but wasn't, as soon as that result was produced they were treated appling. badly terrible violence. i'd recommend any of your views and listeners to go to chris mollinsburg error of judgment for the fine grain detail on this barbaric process, but three of them did confess to a crime they didn't do, two of them never confessed. when it comes to court, there are all kinds of things that are manifestly wrong. these

statements talk about taking the the bombs to the pubs in plastic bags, but the test of the explosion site shows they were in suitcases with d- handles and the places where they say they planted the bombs and not where the bombs. were and yet nonetheless they get convicted and what the judge later ennobled calls the clearest and most overwhelming evidence i've ever heard. now it took a long and thankless campaign to get them out. but if we look at that and we look at the gilford four, one of whom was teenage girl and not even irish. if you look at the conviction of judith ward, if we look at the maguire 7, the youngest of those children convicted was 13 years old and scarred for life by his prison experiences. patrick mcguyer recording in his book my father. watch, and this was terrifying time to be irish in britain, and you had the sense that, okay, they happen to latch to those irish men, but if it hadn't been those, they'd have found others, and i think from having been quite a settled and contented and hardworking immigrant community, it became fearful and somewhat

paranoic irish community for quite a long period of time, certainly into the 1990s. this would have been a period when you had lot of triodsman building the economy of britain at the time. i mean if we're talking about builders, tradesmen, bricklers, there would have been vast employment through britain at the time, and and obviously this this would have been badly affected, but i'm sure it also had an effect on the economy at the time also, has has there been any research into that or has been spoke about in much detail, it's under acknowledged and under researched. yeah, i think if we look at that post-w phase in britain, that that economic reconstruction, first of all you got all the building work and irish labor is central to that building work, then if we think... about the national health service introduced to the back end of the 1940s, a tremendous amount of irish people work in the national health service. if we look at the transport systems in birmingham, london, glasgow, liverpool, manchester, elsewhere, the extent to which ireland contributes to rebuilding the british mainland in the post

world war ii phase is vastly underappreciated and underrecorded, and i think there's a fascinating seam of history and social history that's yet to be fully excavated on that subject. yeah, and which... we think about the you know the underground system, subways and tunnels, mean the vast majority of those were built by donny galman in a small concentrated area and the roses uh b sayid dl the d tigers but that's a whole episode its own but on that there's something of an anithma around the the slogan no blacks, no dogs, no arries, now there's no doubt that we had this uh this campaign against the iris community in england at the time, but how valid is that? i've seen online and i've been responsible it for myself or sharing images that have been photoshopped, is that something that you experienced or seeing yourself? no, it isn't, and when you talk about you you broadcast, i've spoken about this in other forum and you see the virulance of the below the line comments that people care about. this, it's become something of a shibeleth, almost a truism that these signs were there, but if we're

looking at the level of academic knowledge production, where we can triangulate evidence, see it from more than one source, establish that it's there, i regret to say we don't have it, that's not the same as saying it doesn't exist or didn't exist, but to the level of kind of proof we need, that isn't in the public domain, now someone who came maybe came over in the 50s or 60s, late 60s, someone may have that historical artifact which... demonstrates categorically that it existed. what i will say is it's certainly expressive of a truth, it was harder for black people, for irish people to get accommodation when they came over here, and this idea that blacks, irish and dogs all being grouped together, well there was plenty of things said about irish people, i mean a quote that i find hard, but is nonetheless, this is demonstrable after the brighton bomb of 1984, if you take a look at the sunday express of the week. and afterwards, the editor, john junor, later, sir john junor, writes and i quote, wouldn't you rather admit

to being a pig than to being irish? i am irish, i am not a pig, thanks for asking, so there certainly was anti-irish prejudice, and whether that sign exists, i mean, certainly something i saw at for first hand, but didn't photograph, was a park near me after the birmingham pub bombings, just had large graffiti a wall that said, "irish kill, rubber bullets, don't, now that..." happens to be untrue. i think we're looking at 16 or 17 people who were killed by plastic or rubber bullets during the conflict. half of whom were children. my sense is the person responsible for the graffiti wasn't overinterested in historical nuance. whether or not the no blacks, no irish, no dogs specifically existed. it is expressive of a broader truth that there was anti-irish prejudice evident in on the british mainland, and that certainly was accentuated and we certainly experienced it in birmingham. now. 'know the difficulties between academic writing and creative writing and it's something that's quite difficult to navigate.

how have you found out yourself within your work? it's strange because when i as you say i've got a background of writing academic books and academic articles, teach a university in london, it it's part of my professional practice. when i started writing uh one small step, i found it by far the easiest writing project i've ever done, mean it sounds like an arrogant statement but it's just an authentic one. once i started telling the'. of what it was like to be an irish child in birmingham at the time of the birmingham pop bombins, it just flowed. my very few regrets about the process i didn't write this book 15 years earlier, buse you certainly could have done and then been on this journey that much sooner. think a lot of academic writing is from the outside in. so if i'm writing an article for a journal, i know it has to have a literature review section where i look at what other scholars have said, i know it has to have methodology section where i describe how i'm going about it so other scholars could come along and repl. the work and find its faults, which is all all to the good, so there there's a kind

of outside in quality about academic writing, whereas i think the creative process is much more inside out, you almost have to start on the inside and trust the instinctive truth of what you're writing, and then later once i had the first draft of one small step, i went away and did the academic thing of reading everything i could find on the subject to try and make sure that it was a it was decent piece of work in terms of its very similitude as well. is not to say i haven't used creative license in places cuz i have, where i've got to with that now is i actually think all the creative writing has loosened me up little as an academic writer and i've got a little more confidence to start by writing what i actually think and then bring the academic riger to that at some other point so i think i met quite an interesting symbiotic point in my writing where the two which started as kind of opposite ends of polar relationship are coming closer together i'd recommend it to other academics you know start getting creative. an interesting point you made, so in the creative end, you would you would write creatively, let the writing

flow, and then afterwards use your academic knowledge to go back on what you've already written. yeah, i think that the british novelist john fouls who wrote the french lieutenance woman, so you almost need that kind of wildness to begin with of just getting it out there, but then you need to come in with all the editing, i mean anyone who writes creatively, you the idea that you just do this one creative splurge and then present your work to a grateful world, be willing to... think that as a method for creative writing, i think the the the hard hours or once you've done that and then you're going back over it as an editor and you're trying to sharpen meaning and you're trying to find results and you send it to trusted readers. you well enough to tell you when you're wrong, and there was whole, i mean, i remembered in in one small step, the first draft had an entire chapter which was the history of britain's colonial relationship with ireland, the first reader i showed it to give me a very clear retour on that that's not going to work in a novel, and they were right by the way 100%, so i think yes, creative writing is really fascinating process and i think, but you do need then to

be able to bring that cooler detached riger to turn an interesting first draft into a valuable. final document and looking at some of your other work, you've had keen interest in looking at leadership within the republican movement, mean basically from partition onwards, do you want to speak a bit about that? yeah, i think leadership is a really interesting area of study, because our tendency is with leadership to think of leaders, we tend to individualize it, but mean the most fundamental thing we can say about leadership is that it's a social practice, you can't do it on your own, if you or i were marooned a desert island we could say i am the leader, but it's a meaningless statement unless other people are there, so followership is absolutely crucial to leadership, and followership isn't passive, leaders have to take followers with them, or they can't stay leaders, you lose your credibility, so i've been doing lot of work in recent years around leadership as social practice, and i'm finding that irish republicanism, particularly over the period known as the troubles, is really, really

interesting in that regard, because if we look at what the ira and shin fain did over that period was to... a paramilitary body and to transform it political party and to achieve that transformation while maintaining the coherence and solidity of the organization is really remarkable because if we look at the history of irish republicanism it has been prone to splits, it's the brendon bean joke, you put three republicans in room and the first item on the agenda is the split, but if we look at what shin faine accomplished over the course of the troubles, i mean that's extraordinary to affect that transformation while maintaining. organizational coherence, and one i'm finding it very interesting to write about it, i mean a most recent academic article in small worlds and insurgences is called was jerry atoms a transformational leader, and i think even more importantly, if we look at what the organization did and and look at that and academically, we can start to draw truths that we can then say, well what can we learn from how leadership was and followership we

practice in this conflict that we can usefully and productively and progressively apply to conflicts that... still with us, we really only need to take a very cursory look at the world to see that conflict is on the rice. there was something that we had talked about earlier, which really give me food for thought was the cattle gold in internet where he had brought johnson over, and you examine the difference between you know the leadership role of k goldeen then and more contemporary times with jerry adams and bringing the republican movement along with him, do you want to discuss that? yeah, i mean this is really where my scholarly interest comes in is that the failure of an ira uprising from 56 to 1962, operation harvest in the aftermath of that failure, the leader at the time, kachel gulding. i mean, and a thing to say about this is it's not an unreasonable conclusion to have drawn, but to look at since partition, there'd been attempts of uprisings which hadn't succeeded, so gulding thing was, well, we have, there's no point thinking about armed struggle, it's not getting us anywhere, we have to take a more political pathway to this, and it's the

1960s, there's a general leftwood drift in progressive thinking, so gulding brings. over roy johnston from the communist party of great britain and they start to take a much more theoretically driven approach to the conflict. now all of this is well and good, but what it does do is detach leader from followers. gulding is not taking followers with him. there's an addition of the united irishman in that phase in the 1960s which criticizes the practice of saying the rosary. now there's one regional ira leader shan mcstepan who later becomes a central figure. the formation of the provisionals who refuses to sell the newspaper because it's against his own religious values, and he's suspended for a period of time, but that really was an opportunity for the leadership to think, hang on, are we bringing followers with us, because what happens then when the conflict errupts in the late 1960s, the ira has not maintained its armaments, it has a leadership that's committed to a political pathway, and

when the community looks to the ira to defend it, it just simply doesn't have the capacity or the the inclination. particularly to do so, which creates internal dissension leading to the formation of the provisionals, which is much more action driven organization, perceiving a need to act in the immediate moment, so i think gulding's leadership is an interesting kind of micro case study itself of what happens when leaders don't take followers with them, and if we look at what the provisionals did and as it became more political, the the movement was at times glacially slow, but i think that pace of movement is predicated on the understanding that look, if you're not bringing followers... with you, you're going to lose all credibility and not then have any efficacy either, which brings me to your further research and to leadership within the anla and irsp, i think that's something that that fascinates mean. "we will be speaking to someone from the irsp uh shortly on the show. do you want to talk about that? yeah, i mean, i've currently got an article under consideration which looks at leadership in the irsp and inla. if we look at the main

leadership figure in that organization until his killing in in 77, shamus costello, he forms the irish republican socialist party in 1974, and it's not without interest. i mean it takes a very progressive line on women's issues, where i think it has to be acknowledged that one thing about the world the..." ra, it was very male and also very masculine, so i think there was interesting ideas coming out the irsp, and back from right then they were arguing for electoral participation, which again we see with the ira and shin fein, you have to wait until 1986 and the decision to contest elections in the republican to take seats if elected, so it's not as though it didn't have an interesting political proposition to make the irsp, but costello had cut his teeth in that failed campaign of 56 to 62 and then seen gulding's. leadership afterwards, and one of the things that it seems to me at frustrated him was precisely that any operatives, any volunteers had to be answerable to that political leadership, and this was a

hindrance on getting anything done, so he gave his arm wing, the inla lot more autonomy so that they could actually act on operations, but that's taking a big risk, because that's a tactic, the operational, but if it's not overseen by the strategic, it just becomes diffuse and contradictory, and people might pursue personal. grievances or people might pursue self-aggrandizement or even self-enrichment, so if those operatives aren't linked to a strategy, where how are you going to achieve your aim? so i understand where costello's frustration in that 62, then as the conflict escalated, i understand where his frustration came from, but i think there was quite a strategic error made in giving so much operational autonomy to the people on the ground, and the politics got lost and i think the organizationally it degraded after that and to talk about your latest novel, long as the way, which is sat in march 1988, another tumultuous period uh the troubles. do you want to speak a bit about that? yeah, i mean, this is a period

that i find fascinating, it's very disturbing period in the whole conflict in that we have first of all, the sas killing 3 ira active service unit volunteers in gibralter, um, it needs to be pointed out, none of them were armed at the time of their killing, and let's be clear, you don't send the... says in if you're looking to affect a citizen's arrest. so in the aftermath of that killing at the funerals, the funeral itself then a milltown cemetry was attacked and grenades were thrown and shots were fired and three further people were killed. and then a matter of a couple of days later at one of those funerals of the victims there, two british army corporals accidentally drove into the funeral cortage. the mourers thought they were being attacked again, turned on the corpels and killed both them, so it's this awful time. i remember was an undergr. student at the time following these news events in the mainland, and it looked like the whole thing was going to topple over the brink, you civil war looked a real possibility, how can this be stopped,

it's just getting worse, and it's a terrible time in the in the conflict, and yet what we know now that we didn't know then was that these back channel negotiations that fed forward to the peace process were happening then, father alec reed of the redemptist order at the clonard monastery here in belfast was facilitating meetings between jerry adams and john. the sdlp, we know that conversations were happening between shin fein and fienna foil in the republic, so what interests me, i suppose is this counter narrative, because on the one level it's one the most appalling periods in an appalling conflict, and yet there's this below the surface narrative going on, which actually becomes part a component part of what becomes the peace process in the 90s, so those reverse directions of travel or what really interest me and it's that it's that tension, it's that's what i'm trying to capture in the new novel, i'm just... at the back end of finessing the writing and hopefully that will come to publication next year. so what are we expecting from you in the future? what have you got your eyes sat on the horizon? okay,

well there's several projects: one, i'm working on another article about the inla, i mean the article i've got under consideration at the moment ends in 1992 when the provisional ira move against another splinter group from inla called the iplo, the irish people's liberation organization, but internal descension continued to... characterized the inla thereafter, and there was an internal feude again resulting in in deaths in the mid 1990s, and again i want to look at that period and say, well, what was the leadership like, what was the followership like, because i think if we can identify those failings in leadership and followership, those structural failings, we can actually draw lessons which continue to have use value and aren't just academic project hermetically sealed in itself. i'm also developing a book proposal to look at leadership in the ir and shin fain throughout the 30 years of the conflict, there were some fantastic canonical studies or an overviews the troubles, there were some excellent themed works on the trouble, so i've been

reading one at the moment, thomas lee, he's... on the intelligence war throughout the conflict, but there's no study of leadership in that period, and because i think it's so critical to the transformation the conflict, it feels like a really rich theme to explore. i'm also working on another couple of novels that one in particular, i want to revert back to looking at how the troubles impacted in the united kingdom. there's a case, it's pretty much forgotten now of guy called kenneth lennon, who was a special branch tout and informant giving information in 1974, it had got. too much for him, he was having a bit of a breakdown and starting to tell people, which i think, and next thing he's his paul dead body was found a lane near gatwick airport in 1974, and you think, well, obviously the ira caught out with him, he was at out there for, but you left thinking scratching your head, well, the ira didn't have that kind of infrastructure in the united kingdom mainland in 1974, and there a question marks about who really killed this character, and i think i will dramatize that and draw it away from the

historical. which is merky anyway and think about it in creative terms, but i think i've always felt that is if the british public knew the full extent of what went on in this conflict on what is britain claims british constitutional soil, i think it would disturb the general public really to know the full extent what's going on, and i think it's important at this stage now when there's a risk of rather anesthetic narrative being constructed about the the troubles, those of us who work academically, those of us work creatively, i think we have to have the courage to be willing to surface uncomfortable truths, not simply for their own sake, but for the learning we can take forward, because the irish constitutional question is still unresolved, there have been some really interesting events happening around ireland's future, there's a lot of pluralistic dialogue that has to draw in all the different communities, and i think if we get this right, there's lessons that can be learned that can have broader geopolitical value, and my goodness that's needed, well...

i could sit and talk to you all day, i'm a big fan of your research and i'm looking forward to see what you have in the future. i want to thank you again, which is your first time, i've been told your first time in belfast, it's been amazing, yeah, and where's bfast in particular? yeah, i've spent yesterday walking around, yeah, mean it, it's personally transformational, listen, you're always welcome, you have my number, i'm hoping to see more of you in the future, that's great, it's been a privilege to be here, thank you, thank you, and that does it for another week, we'd love for you to join the conversation by showing the link to today's program to help us grow audience across all our social media platforms. i like to thank our special guest dr. michael floven, in the meantime, the conversation will be back next week with more investigations and analysis. i'm sean murray, bye for now.

in our upcoming show we delve into the zinist israeli summer camps operation in the northern west bank now in its second week, a blatant aggression that seeks to achieve what was unsuccessful in gaza, displacing palestinians under the pretense of voluntary relocation, as israeli occupation forces employ brutal tactics such as sabotage and blockades, resistance factions in janin and tulk are. pushing back with increased effectiveness using advanced tactics and explosive devices. we'll explore how the resistance strategic operations, including impactful actions in hebron khalil, are disrupting israeli entity military plans and changing the dynamics on the ground. west bank rises strong this week on the media stream.

the headlines israel's air strikes and artillery fire claim more civilian lives across the gaza strip with the genocidal war's death tool exceeding 40,800. hamas says us is a partner in israel's crimes in gaza and its new cease-fire proposal seeks. give the regime time to commit more crimes. thousands of israeli protesters hold mass rallies across the occupied territories demanding the resignation of the prime minister and his cabinet.